Before the Storm
by sheepishwolfy
Summary: Between the events of ME2 and ME3. Kaidan is assigned to escort the Normandy back to Earth after the events of Arrival. M for some language and eventually some adult situations.
1. Chapter 1

_"You've been assigned to escort the Normandy back to Earth. Try to make sure she arrives without incident."_

Councilor Anderson's words echoed in the commander's head as he strode down the Citadel dry docks. Kaidan Alenko knew the "she" applied to the ship's captain as much as the ship herself. The Normandy and her crew were seemingly unable to travel anywhere without incident. The most recent had involved an asteroid striking a relay and obliterating the surrounding system.

Now the brass on Earth needed someone to explain, preferably in a live broadcast to the rest of the galaxy, that this had not been a sanctioned Alliance act. Someone to clarify the exact reasons why three hundred thousand batarian colonists needed to die. Someone to stop the brewing war between humans and batarians.

That someone was Commander Elizabeth Shepard.

And Kaidan had been, for reasons known only to God and Council, tasked with making sure the infamous Shepard made it to the Local Cluster in one piece. Per Councilor Anderson's request, the Normandy had docked with the Citadel before returning to Alliance space. The crew had been given two months to make necessary repairs to the ship before returning to Earth.

Looming before him now, the SR-2 was twice the size of her predecessor. Despite the scorches and dents that marred her otherwise sleek hull, she was still a thing of beauty. Roughly patched holes peppered her cargo bay, evidence of a harsh foray into the Omega 4 relay. That she had returned at all was a miracle.

He paused a moment before the great starship. Immense size discrepancy aside, Kaidan could have been standing before the original Normandy. Scaffolds were being erected around her, turian and human engineers alike bent over schematics and chattering. Though the technicians were hard work repairing the cosmetic and structural damage to her hull rather than newly constructing it, the scene was the same as the first time he had beheld the SR-1. That had been three years ago, even before he had met _her._

There was nothing remarkable about that meeting, though; a simple, curt nod across the mess hall the night before they departed dry dock on their first cruise. They had been formally introduced not long after, then-Captain Anderson familiarizing the XO with the rest of the crew. Shepard had come late to the Normandy, her prior mission, some classified N7 operative work, having run longer than expected. She had never told him what that mission was, why it was so important the higher-ups allowed her to report to the prototype frigate two weeks late. He hadn't thought to ask.

A shout across the dock startled Kaidan from his reverie, and he shook his head to clear it. Nothing good would come of losing himself in rosy-lensed nostalgia. He needed a clear head, couldn't risk a repeat of their last meeting. Another Horizon would permanently sever whatever tenuous bond remained between them.

"You know I heard they were giving us a Spectre to take us back to Earth, but I never thought you'd be stupid enough to take that assignment."

"Excuse me?" Kaidan frowned, turning. He wasn't surprised to see Joker standing behind him, arms crossed, smirking from beneath the bill of his cap. Something was different about him, but Kaidan couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was.

"After whatever that happy bullshit was on Horizon, I'd fear for my life if I was you, Alenko. You'd be safer on thresher maw insemination duty than talking to her." Taking one shuffling step forward, Joker extended his hand by way of greeting. "Still, good to see you, Kaidan."

"And you, Joker," Kaidan replied, grasping the offered hand. Surveying his old friend, Kaidan realized what it was that was different. "No crutches?"

"No crutches," Joker affirmed, shrugging. "One of the benefits of being the best pilot in the private sector, you get to demand your price. I'll always be glad Cerberus put me back in the cockpit of my baby," he said, jerking a thumb at the battered starship. "But it was real nice of them to toss in a set of mostly-functional legs, free of charge. They still break more easily than I'm really comfortable with, but I'll take it."

Kaidan nodded, chuckling. "Glad you're doing well," he said.

There was a moment of awkward silence, Joker adjusting his cap and Kaidan scuffing one foot on the dock.

"Suppose I should report to the commanding officer," Alenko said finally, turning a resigned gaze to the ship's airlock. "Get it over with now."

Joker laughed. "Relax, she's not even here. You get to keep your sac for a few more hours," the pilot said, smirking. "She took Jacob and Garrus on some sort of field trip to C-Sec. No idea when she's coming back."

A mixture of relief and disappointment welled in Kaidan's chest, and looked back to Joker. "So should I wait here, or…?"

Clapping a hand on the Spectre's shoulder, Joker turned him around and started walking away from the ship. "Hell, no. Let's go get fucked up."

"You're going to leave your ship unattended? Joker, I'm surprised at you."

"Just surface repairs right now, I feel secure that Miranda would not leave the Normandy and her shareholder's money in the hands of idiots," Joker explained. "And EDI's directing it all, and she might be overbearing but if I can trust anyone with my baby it's her."

Kaidan was so shocked his eyebrows were in danger of disappearing into his hairline. Whoever Edie was, she must be an incredible woman for Joker to leave alone with his ship.

* * *

><p>They had encountered Tali as they walked down the peer, and somehow Joker had roped her into joining their excursion into the Wards. Arriving at Dark Star, Joker selected a table in the far corner of the room, and inelegantly seated himself. Kaidan followed suit, surveying the room.<p>

Dark Star was relatively empty, the only other patrons being a few asari dancing lazily in one corner; three Alliance marines furtively watching them; and two salarians and a hanar at a table near the bar.

A cheerful asari waitress appeared next to their table, requesting their order.

"A pitcher of your finest krogan beer," said Joker, before anyone else could reply. "And three tequila shots."

"I can't drink that," Tali chirped. "…Whatever it is."

"Three tequila shots," Joker repeated. He pointed to Kaidan, "This guy needs two anyway."

"I'll be right back." The waitress turned and bustled away.

"Technically I'm on duty right now, Joker, I shouldn't be here," Kaidan protested when the drinks were set before them.

"You're a crewmember of the Normandy now, Alenko, and the crew has been given shore leave. So technically, you're on shore leave." Joker picked up a shot and pressed it into Kaidan's hand. "Drink up, _Commander._"

"You're rejoining the Normandy?" Tali inquired, with a note of surprise. "But we have not rejoined the Alliance, and I was told you would never consider joining Cerberus. Not that we were ever Cerberus agents, really, just working with a few of their operatives to the same goal… and since Shepard had some…" she paused, searching for the right word. "_Coarse _words with the Illusive Man, I don't think we-"

"Tali," Joker interjected. "You're starting to ramble like Mordin."

"Sorry… I just meant, I didn't think we'd see you on the Normandy for a while."

Kaidan threw back the shot, realizing he was definitely going to need it. "It wasn't exactly my first choice in duty stations."

"Alenko is the Spectre we were promised," Joker said, sipping at his beer. "Because we can't get ourselves to Earth without Council-sanctioned assistance."

"I had heard you were inducted," Tali said, turning towards him. He could hear the smile behind her mask as she said, "Congratulations. I was proud to see that."

"Thank you, Tali," Kaidan replied.

The trio quickly fell into the conversation of old friends long-unseen, reminiscing over their exploits on the original Normandy and catching up with what had happened over the previous two years. Tali animatedly described the SR-2's new FTL drives and reactor cores, while Joker extolled the virtues of improved handling and leather seats.

Two pitchers of beer later, Kaidan was feeling pleasantly warm as Tali recounted the latest ship's gossip, Joker throwing in snide commentary where necessary. He had no idea who half the people were, but Kaidan found it amusing to hear the quarian get so excited about Normandy personal affairs.

"…Ken and Gabby, who I think may be… what is the human term? Sleeping on each other? They are surprisingly ferocious at Skyllian five. The commander is terrible, she always sticks her tongue out when she's got a good hand," Tali laughed. "Shepard is…" she paused, and sat a little straighter. "Shepard. Have you seen her yet?"

Kaidan sighed, the pleasantness suddenly seeping away. "Not yet," he said, looking down at his half-empty glass. "She wasn't there when I tried to report. I haven't seen her since… in a while."

"Ah… does she know you'll be accompanying us to your homeworld?" she asked quietly.

He shook his head. "No. I don't think so, unless Anderson told her."

Tali looked down, absently tracing one gloved finger over the pattern on the table top. "She keeps a picture of you in her cabin. On her desk."

"She does _not_," Joker scoffed. "There's no way. Not after the things she said to me when… well, don't worry about the things she said to me. But I find that hard to believe."

"Thank you, Joker, I feel great about my chances now," Kaidan said flatly.

"I doubt you had much of a chance, bro," Joker replied, shrugging. "Personally I think she's going to punch you in the stomach so hard you throw up everything you've ever even considered eating. But sure, sure, she'll be completely fine with you lurking around her ship. My ship."

"Don't listen to Joker," Tali said, placing a hand reassuringly on Kaidan's forearm. "I don't think seeing her will go as poorly as either of you assume. Just… be careful. Shepard may be more fragile than you expect."

"She head butted a krogan," Joker blurted. "In the face."

"You're not help… you're shitting me," Kaidan turned an incredulous look on Joker. "You made that up to scare me."

"Oh no, it happened. I saw it," Joker replied, apparently serious. "She was planetside on Tuchanka. I can show you the footage back on the Normandy if you want."

Kaidan felt vaguely ill. "I don't think that's necessary, Joker."

Across the table, Tali pushed herself to her feet. "I should be going," she said. "It was pleasant to see you again, Commander Alenko."

"You too, Tali," Kaidan replied.

"Remember what I said, when you see her." With that, Tali'Zorah turned and walked away, nodding politely to the waitress as she left. A long silence stretched behind her, which Joker used to finish his beer and pour a last one from the nearly empty pitcher.

"Did she get my letter?" Kaidan asked softly, not looking up from his drink.

The glass paused halfway to Joker's mouth, and he slowly set it back on the table. "We got it past TIM, but what she did with it from there I don't know. She never mentioned it. To me, anyway."

Alenko nodded once, slowly.

"That doesn't mean she didn't read it. It just means she doesn't talk to me about… feelings… Or some shit." Joker was growing awkward. "Look, man, I don't do this touchy feely stuff."

Another long silence, even more painfully uncomfortable than the last.

"She asked about you, you know. Every chance she got. I got assigned to her, Garrus was a lucky coincidence, and Tali was a happy accident after Freedom's Progress. But she _wanted_ you," Joker said at last, for once all sarcasm gone from his voice. Kaidan looked up, a modicum of surprise tickling the back of his mind. "Anderson and Cerberus both gave her the 'classified assignment' run around, Miranda wouldn't give her any intel, and then the Illusive Asshole dropped her on Horizon. You should be familiar with _that_ part of the story."

"More than I'd like to be," Kaidan murmured.

"She caught a fatal case of the dead, and you gave her a reaming about it," Joker explained helpfully.

"I was there, Joker." Another silence. "What about… after?"

"She definitely punched a dent in the wall next to the airlock. That was pretty impressive," Joker paused, remembering the incident with a certain fondness, despite the damage to his ship. "First she told me it had gone 'less than well,' that night in the mess she told me all manner of rude things. And then… not much, really. She concentrated on the mission I guess, built a team out of what she had, and here we all are. Still alive because she felt like doing her job right, without worrying about the politics behind it."

"I guess I'm lucky she didn't punch a dent in me." It was all he could think to say. The mix of emotions currently at war in his chest was making him ineloquent.

"Yet."

"Yet," Kaidan agreed. "I suppose it's still a distinct possibility."

Joker laughed, and then turned uncharacteristically serious. "Don't fuck it up, Kaidan. You will not get a third chance."

With another sigh, Kaidan downed the last of his beer and pushed to his feet. "I know."


	2. Chapter 2

The walk back to the drydocks was slow, as both Joker and Alenko were mildly inebriated. They had effortlessly set aside their serious interlude, and had turned to discussing merits of the latest Blasto film ("After the first three they've all sort of become 'solid waste excretions' if you catch my drift," was Joker's opinion.)

When they finally reached their destination, Joker stopped them short of entering the ship so he could both admire and expound upon the exterior of his beloved Normandy.

"…and Garrus fitted her with these ridiculous Thanix cannons," Joker said, beaming and pointing to the armaments on the underside of the ship's hull. "Never seen anything like them on an Alliance ship, these bad boys are…" he paused, looking first at Kaidan, then past him. "Oh shit."

"What?" Kaidan followed his gaze, and spotted the reason for Joker's profanity. "Oh, shit," he agreed, suddenly struck by sobriety.

There she was, the woman who had haunted him for two and a half years. She was striding down the dock, so far oblivious to the two men watching her approach. With her was the same dark-skinned man who had accompanied her to Horizon, and both of them were laughing about something.

The commander was never what could typically be called 'pretty.' Striking, yes. Terrifying, most definitely. But never pretty.

Kaidan, however, was intimately familiar with how beautiful she could be when she smiled, as she was doing now. The upward quirk of her just-slightly-too-wide mouth softened the otherwise hard, angular planes of her face; lit her brilliantly green eyes with an unfailing kindness and a surprising humor. Straw-colored hair curled against her forehead and the base of her skull, the same practical, close-cropped style she had always worn.

Her one concession to vanity was a slim ring of dark liner around her eyes, applied each morning with the same level of practiced efficiency as she would display in replacing the clip of a pistol. It had always been endearing to Kaidan, a precision point of femininity in a woman who had more testicular fortitude than a legion of krogan warlords.

When she and the unfamiliar man drew close, she finally looked up and for a moment turned that magnificent smile on him. In that instant, when their eyes met and he stopped breathing, Kaidan dared to hope that Elizabeth Shepard still loved him.

Then recognition dawned, the laugh died in her throat and the smile slid away from her features, replaced by an authoritative mask. There an almost imperceptible shift in her posture when they reached the airlock, a straightening of the spine and a squaring of the shoulders. She clasped her hands behind her back.

Elizabeth had vanished, replaced by Commander Shepard, Spectre and Alliance officer. She had always possessed that uncanny ability to compartmentalize her personality, to bring out that authoritative part of herself without so much as a blink. Commander Shepard was decisive and unsentimental, able to instantly prioritize mission goals and make the decisions a lesser officer would find impossible. This part of her was brought to bear whenever duty or diplomacy required a swift and absolute action to the greatest benefit of mission and crew, unencumbered by personal prejudice.

Kaidan had witnessed this transition a thousand times, in battle both real and political. She had only once turned it directly on him, over Alchera.

"Commander," Joker said, by way of greeting. He was remarkably subdued, having also noted her subtle shift.

"Joker," she replied, nodding curtly. Her eyes flickered quickly back to Kaidan, and he knew in that brief glance she had instantly assessed and categorized him, as efficiently as she would any enemy combatant. That one glance allowed her to swiftly and accurately judge the reason for his presence. "I assume Commander Alenko is the Spectre we were told to anticipate."

"You assume correct, ma'am," Joker said. "Where's Garrus? I thought he went with you to… wherever you went."

"Vakarian had personal business to attend to when we were finished in C-Sec," she replied shortly. She turned her attention briefly back to Kaidan. "Welcome to the Normandy, Commander Alenko. Report to XO Lawson for a cabin assignment."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, his voice carefully neutral.

Steely eyes turned on her helmsman. "Joker, cockpit. Five minutes," she said, a hard edge creeping into her voice. "Gentlemen, if you'll excuse me."

Shepard didn't wait for a reply before abruptly turning and striding towards the airlock. With a punch of a button and a mechanical hiss, she had disappeared into the ship.

"I'd better go see what she wants," Joker said after a moment, turning towards the ship. "Probably to present me with a freshly-torn new asshole."

A second hiss and Kaidan found himself alone with the man who had been laughing with Shepard. He noted, with a certain level of mild irritation, the Cerberus emblem on the man's uniform.

"An honor to meet you, Commander Alenko. I hear you were with the commander when she led the defense of the Citadel," said the man, without hesitation. The words were unexpectedly friendly. Perhaps he hadn't caught the tension. "Jacob Taylor," he added, stepping forward and offering a hand. "Armory chief of the Normandy."

Kaidan shook the man's hand, and couldn't help but wondering what it was this Jacob Taylor had been laughing about with Elizabeth. Maybe she had moved on, and this was his replacement.

Unlikely, Joker would have said something rather than lecturing about self-righteousness.

Wouldn't he?

"A pleasure, Mr. Taylor," he said, expertly feigning amiability. "I'd better get to Lawson. See you around the ship."

Stepping into the airlock, Kaidan slowly released the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The dispassionate voice of the ship's VI informed him of the decontamination currently in progress, and he took advantage of the momentary isolation to attempt collect himself.

He had prepared for a week for this assignment, steeling himself to face her. Yet despite his determination to remain calm and collected, to be unaffected by whatever deservedly scathing thing she could say or do… he still felt gut-shot.

* * *

><p>Joker took a moment to weigh the option of deserting. From his position in front of the CIC, he could see Shepard standing rigidly in the cockpit, her hands on her hips. This was not going to be a friendly chat about where to find the best sandwich shop on the Citadel.<p>

Whatever it was, getting reamed by Shepard was better than losing a second Normandy, and Joker finally shuffled forward. Shepard did not immediately acknowledge him when he reached her, so he sat in his pilot's chair and waited silently. He knew when it was better to keep his mouth shut.

Shepard just stared out the ship's windshield, jaw clenched tight, for a long time. So long, in fact, that Joker began to idly worry that not all of the Collectors had been cleared from the Normandy and that the commander had taken an errant Seeker sting. Finally she reached forward and entered a command into the console, and the cockpit's emergency doors whirred shut behind them.

"Any particular reason you didn't want to warn me who I was going to find outside my ship, Joker?" she asked, never taking her eyes away from the window. Her tone was carefully controlled, and it was terrifying.

"I didn't know he was coming, Commander. I was told as much as you were, that we were getting a Spectre babysitter. I didn't know it was going to be _that_ Spectre," he said, putting his hands up in mock defense.

"You knew it was _that_ Spectre when you were standing together outside my ship," she shot back.

"That… sort of goes without saying, Commander. I couldn't possibly stand next to him and not know-"

"Don't you give me that, Joker," she said sharply. "You couldn't get a quick message to my omni-tool? Have EDI contact me?"

"Sorry, Commander, there wasn't really much time-"

"You were away with Commander Alenko for approximately two hours, twenty-six minutes and thirty-four seconds before returning to the Normandy, Jeff." EDI blinked to life next to the control console.

"Thanks, EDI!" Joker exclaimed, giving the AI a sharp thumbs up and a hugely exaggerated open-mouthed smile. "How do you even know these things?"

"Engineer Tali'Zorah informed me upon her return that she encountered and consequently spent some time with you and Commander Alenko. I simply approximated the time based on when you left and returned the Normandy."

"Well, I really needed your help there."

"Of course, Jeff." EDI blinked out.

Looking slowly back to Shepard, Joker saw she had finally turned to look at him, and desperately wished she hadn't. She seemed to be trying to burn holes in his skull with her eyes.

"Two hours?" she snapped. "Two and a half goddamn hours and you didn't have _time_? You didn't think that maybe, _maybe_, I might want a little warning that I was going to find _Kaidan fucking Alenko _waiting outside my ship? Did you enjoy watching me fumble-fuck around back there?"

Joker snorted. "You definitely weren't 'fumble-fucking,' ma'am," he said, a certain amount of respect in his voice. "I think you actually handled yourself really well, considering. The aloof officer play was brilliant, I never would have thought of that. Keep him hooked. He'll be eating out of your hand like a pyjack in a petting zoo by the end of the week. Personally I was hoping for a solid knee in the tenders."

"Keep it up, Joker, I can make that happen," she growled.

"You wouldn't hit a cripple," he replied, only half joking. He realized that in this one instance, she might actually hit a cripple.

"Watch me," she snarled. "And 'keeping him hooked' is not my intention by any means. He made his position _very_ clear that last time we… spoke."

Some of the anger seemed to bleed out of her then, and she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her shoulders slumped slightly when she exhaled and looked at him dolefully.

"I didn't need that kind of surprise, Joker," she said quietly. "Not after what we just did on Bahak."

When she lowered her eyes, Joker began to feel guilty about not giving her any kind of a heads-up. Shepard was usually so resilient, he hadn't considered that she might still be reeling from the incident at the Alpha Relay, or that suddenly seeing Kaidan may have been like salt in a freshly re-opened wound. With a sigh, he attempted to apologize.

"Look, Shepard, I-"

"Don't, Joker." She cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Just don't. Warn me before I step on another grenade, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am." As Shepard punched the door control and turned to leave, something, some irritatingly sentimental part of him, made Joker speak up again.

"Elle," he called. She paused in the doorway, and turned to look over her shoulder at him, an inquisitive look on her face. Joker very rarely used her first name. "What about the letter?"

Her eyes narrowed dangerously, and she turned fully to face him, crossing her arms. "How do you know about that?"

Joker shrugged. "Who do you think got it past the Illusive Man?"

"Traitor!" she hissed, and turned on her heel to stalk away. He thought he detected at least a little humor in her voice that time.

_Technically it was Tali, _he thought, smiling as he watched Shepard disappear into the elevator at the far end of the command deck. _But there's no reason to get technical._


	3. Chapter 3

"XO Lawson?"

The formidable looking woman behind the desk did not look away from her holo-display when Kaidan he rapped one knuckled against the door frame to announce his presence.

"I really wish Shepard would not insist upon using these military terms," she said, tapping something into the screen. She considered a moment, then turned her attention fully to him, arching one slender, perfectly sculpted eyebrow as she did so. Her eyes flicked up and down his person, and Kaidan had the uncomfortable feeling he had just been weighed, sorted, and permanently filed away.

"Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko," Lawson said, folding her hands on her desk. "You must be the promised Spectre."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, mildly unnerved at the way she had instantly identified him. As far as he remembered he had never previously met this woman, though he had seen her in the security footage from Freedom's Progress. The same footage that had confirmed the rumors that Shepard, or at least a damn convincing copy, was alive.

"Don't look so startled, Commander, I witnessed the Horizon op, I know who you are," she replied, expertly reading in his face what he thought he had successfully suppressed.

Of course she had. Probably the entire crew had.

He had the sudden feeling that this assignment was going to be even more difficult than defending the Citadel from Sovereign.

"Of course I knew about you well before that. Powerful L2 biotic. Participant in the BAaT program. Joined the Alliance military at twenty-two. Stationed aboard the original Normandy as Staff Lieutenant. Granted Spectre status three months ago," she continued. She listed off the facts of his life in the same unaffected manner she would use to read a grocery list.

"You've done your homework," he said, furrowing his brow. Kaidan wasn't sure what point this woman was trying to make.

"There was a period of time where you were Shepard's biggest liability. Shepard is my investment, and as such her liabilities are my concern." It was becoming rapidly apparent that there were now two women who resented his presence aboard the Normandy. "I had hoped recent events had rectified that. This is obviously not the case."

"Commander Shepard instructed me to report to you for a cabin assignment," Kaidan said shortly. The lights in the office were growing uncomfortably bright, and he hoped to be lying down when the migraine hit full stride.

"Then how fortuitous for both of us that the mercenary"–she said 'mercenary' as though it were the most distasteful thing she could think of-"previously squatting on the engineering deck chose this very morning to vacate."

"For both of us?" He sounded testy even to himself.

"Fortuitous for you because you have a cabin to yourself, as befits your station. A Spectre should not be expected to bunk with the rest of the crew," she explained. "Fortuitous for me because, being on the engineering deck, your chances of encountering Shepard are greatly reduced."

She paused, icy blue eyes contemplating him. A quirk of her eyebrow suggested she had come to some profound conclusion.

"This is not a personal affront, Commander Alenko," she said finally. Her tone had softened considerably. "There is a positively spectacular shitstorm brewing in Shepard's near future. She cannot afford the distraction of a handsome ex-lover mooning around behind her."

Kaidan bristled at the insinuation that he 'mooned.' "Understood, ma'am," he replied tersely.

"It would be appreciated if you could also provide whatever services you see fit to get the Normandy fully functional again," Lawson added, businesslike tone returning. "I understand you posses a certain amount of mechanical prowess. Any repairs or improvements you could offer would greatly expedite our time in drydock."

"Yes, ma'am." Kaidan turned and gratefully started for the exit.

"And Commander," Lawson called when he reached the door. Kaidan looked over his shoulder, and saw she had returned her attention to her work.

"Do not let the engineers talk you into playing Skyllian Five with the geth. It counts cards."

As the door slid shut with an innocuous beep, Kaidan was left to wonder what that could possibly be a euphemism for.

The 'cabin' was technically the repurposed half of a cargo hold. The engineering deck was several degrees warmer than he found comfortable, but the room had a cot and he could turn off the lights, so Kaidan found no reason to complain.

It was unsettling that the most relaxing part of the day so far involved him laying in the dark with the heels of his hands pressed firmly into his eyes in a vain attempt to physically suppress the throbbing pain behind them. It had been months since his last migraine, and Kaidan had no delusions as to its trigger.

He had mentally prepared for the week leading up to this assignment, steeling himself for the inevitable meeting with Shepard. Kaidan had anticipated brutal censure, or for her to deny him entry to her ship, or- and this seemed the most likely- her armored elbow placed firmly in his eye socket.

What he had never expected, not in the many times he imagined this second reunion, was her complete lack of sentiment, negative or otherwise. It had never occurred to him that her response would be to turn into the Commander, and dismiss him to her XO.

The utter lack of emotion in her eyes was worse than if she had simply shot him point-blank in each knee cap. With incendiary rounds.

Kaidan roughly pushed aside his sudden thoughts of self-pity. It was probably best that Shepard saw him as no more than the Spectre assigned to escort her ship home. As much as it pained him to admit, Lawson had been right. Shepard had dangerous things looming in her near future, she didn't need the distraction.

He had said himself, that night before Ilos, that he didn't want whatever was between them to muddy things up. Alliance ships functioned better without the confusion borne of crew relationships.

There were regs against fraternization.

But then again, this wasn't an Alliance ship.

* * *

><p>"Frankly, Councilor, I find it insulting that you think I require an escort at all."<p>

Shepard stood before the large holo display in her cabin, frowning magnificently. She was conferencing with Councilor Anderson, who looked world-weary and mildly annoyed. Udina hovered over his shoulder, arms crossed, lips pursed, sour as ever.

"Shepard you know as well as I that my hands are tied here," Anderson replied tiredly. "_I_ realize you will have no trouble getting yourself to Earth. However, the rest of the galaxy does not. You're a wild card, we both know that, and Council presence on your ship will go a long way to ease whatever alien doubts are currently floating around."

Shepard sighed. He had a point.

"I don't think the escort is the problem," Udina cut in, scowling orangely through the holo. "I think, Commander, you resent less the Council presence on your ship than you do our specific choice of Spectre."

_Damn_ that man, he was too cunning for his own good. She would never have admitted that to Anderson, or for that matter to anyone else, but Udina had an uncanny ability to cut straight to the real motivations in any argument.

"There was _no one_ else?" she replied, pinching the bridge of her nose. No use pretending her call was about anything other than Kaidan's assignment to the Normandy.

"Using a human escort gives the impression we are capable of cleaning up our own messes, Commander," Anderson explained. "But making that escort also a Spectre shows we know to defer to the Council in such things as well. Unfortunately there are only two human Spectres- you, and Commander Alenko."

"I'm impressed, Anderson," Shepard said bitingly. "You've become quite the _politician_."

She got the desired reaction when Anderson hackled. To a man who was at heart a soldier, the word 'politician' was a blasphemous curse.

"Lock down that attitude, Shepard," he said warningly.

"I just don't appreciate being played by every political power in the galaxy," she replied.

"You should have considered the _politics_ of destroying an entire batarian colony, Shepard," Udina snapped. "We are on the verge of war because of you. You're lucky we are even giving you the option of coming yourself, with only _one_ Spectre escort. We could have sent a fleet to arrest you."

"_You_ should consider the politics of Reapers overrunning the galaxy!" she roared, slamming her hands on the desk. Kaidan's picture rattled, which somehow only served to irritate her further. "Do _not_ lecture me on the legal implications of my actions, Ambassador. I live with the ethical ones _every day_. I don't need Alenko babysitting me to make sure I answer to Alliance brass or my own conscience."

"Enough, both of you," Anderson said sharply. "Shepard, I'm sorry it had to end up this way, but you need to set aside whatever personal issues remain between you and Commander Alenko."

"With all due respect, Commander, this is why the regulations of crew fraternization exist," Udina sniffed.

"With all due respect, Ambassador, fuck you."

She punched the comm button angrily, and the holo flickered off, replaced by the model fleet behind the glass. Sitting forcefully, she shot a glare at the picture on her desk. Kaidan stared stoically back, and she reached forward to slam the picture face-down onto the desk.

His letter was still open on her computer, however. She had, for reasons unknown even to herself, instinctively opened it when she had returned to her room after the confrontation with Joker. Anderson responding to her request for a meeting had interrupted Shepard's thousandth read-through.

The letter had sat in her inbox, unread, for weeks. She was still too furious after Horizon to bother perusing it, and hadn't opened it at all until the night before they went through the Omega 4 relay. There were no more side assignments to complete, no other missions secondary to saving her crew, that could distract her from reading it any longer.

At first it had just made her angry again, that he had the audacity to be sweet and sad after the biting things he had said on Horizon. It had taken her twenty minutes, and a second read-through, to relent. She knew she couldn't stay angry forever, and possibly had never been that angry to begin with. She still kept his picture, after all.

Her rational mind knew that Kaidan was justified in his response, that what had only been eleven days for her had been more than two years for him. Had the positions been reversed, she may have acted the same way. She had gone through the relay having forgiven him, able to face her death without that particular weight on her heart.

Somehow she had gone the few months since the Omega 4 able to look at his picture without feeling either anger or overwhelming sadness. Some days there was even hope.

But seeing him again, standing on the dock next to the Normandy as though he belonged there, had reopened that old wound. Shepard felt like she had been punched in the chest by a krogan, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to scream or cry or vomit.

She finally settled on assuming the role of Commander, receiving him with no more ado than their Spectre escort deserved. He had responded in kind, and he was always so inscrutable that she didn't know if that was his true intention or if he was merely matching her professional façade.

Best not to test it. There was too much going on already without trying to decipher her feelings. Shepard pushed away from her desk, resolved to maintain her authoritative demeanor. With luck, Kaidan would be sequestered belowdecks in engineering most of the time. There were always repairs to be made, calibrations to be run. Tali still had a good rapport with Kaidan, and the machinist was always bemoaning the need for more technicians. At least he would be able to make himself useful.

It was only two months, at absolute maximum, and then they would be on Earth and he could be sent back to the Citadel for another mission and she would…

Be on trial so the Alliance could scapegoat her in the name of saving face, while the Reapers were practically knocking on their door.

With an exasperated sigh, Shepard set the picture upright again.

"'When things settled down,' you said," she muttered.


	4. Chapter 4

"What the hell happened to this thing?"

Kaidan stared incredulously at the Hammerhead, and the debris lodged in its undercarriage. All manner of plant life was wedged into the chassis, apparently glued in place by the foul-smelling white conductive fluid usually found on the inside of a geth. It shouldn't have been possible to make such a mess out of the underside of a hovercraft.

"Shepard happened to that thing," Garrus responded flatly. The turian was leaning against the outside of the nearby Kodiak shuttle, a datapad in one hand. He had retreated to the cargo bay to escape Miranda, who was after him about financial reports regarding the main battery improvements.

"She couldn't drive the Mako, either," Kaidan grunted, pulling futilely at what looked suspiciously like the remains of a pyjack. "Always ran that goddamn thing into whatever obstacle happened to appear. I spent half my life fixing it."

"Ken just stopped one day," Garrus said, shrugging. "He told her that if she couldn't be bothered to watch where she went, then he couldn't be bothered to keep it running. We haven't used it since."

Two weeks had passed since Kaidan's arrival on the Normandy, and other than that first night it had been almost entirely uneventful. Tali had been thrilled when he offered his services, and immediately set him to work on all manner of maintenance that the rest of the engineering crew deemed unnecessary or too odious to complete.

Shepard continued to assume her rigid commanding officer posture on the rare occasions they happened to be in the same room. She never looked him directly in the eye. That had bothered him at first, but the sheer scope of tiny repairs that needed to be done had quickly distracted him. Since Shepard had never been particularly mechanically inclined, they were rarely in the same part of the ship anyway.

His first meeting with Legion, and consequently EDI, had been the one exceptionally exciting event. Kaidan had emerged from the shower on his second day aboard, and come face to flashlight face with a geth. Thankfully no one had been around to hear the embarrassingly scream-like noise that tortured itself out of his throat.

"We were curious about the Spectre," the thing said, making no overtly threatening moves. "Shepard-Commander informed us that you were instrumental in the destruction of Nazara."

Some detached part of Kaidan's mind noted that this must be the geth he was told not to engage in poker with. "You… are a geth," he said eloquently.

"We are many geth," it replied.

Man and machine stared at one another for a long time. Kaidan clutched the towel protectively around his waist, considering the sudden distinct possibility that he was going to be killed in the ship's head. The flaps around the geth's single bright 'eye' only fluttered curiously.

"The geth unit is a member of the crew, Commander Alenko."

Kaidan nearly jumped out of his skin. A blue orb appeared suddenly near the door behind the geth, blinking innocuously as it spoke. "It is harmless."

He just stared, wondering if maybe he was still sleeping and this was some truly bizarre dream.

"I am EDI, the ship's AI," the orb said.

"This ship has an AI?" It was all he could think to ask.

"Yes."

"I assumed 'Edie' was a yeoman," he murmured, mostly to himself. Since it was becoming apparent that the geth was not going to shoot him in the unarmored stomach, Kaidan stood straighter and attempted to regain at least some of his dignity. The initial rush of adrenaline subsided, and he noted to his chagrin the unit didn't even have a gun.

"Does it… do you have a name?" he asked, turning his attention from the AI to the geth.

"We are Geth," it replied. "Shepard-Commander refers to us as Legion. We have adopted this name."

With that it turned and walked out of the head, apparently satisfied with whatever it had seen. Kaidan stared after it, dumbfounded. He supposed he shouldn't be entirely surprised; Shepard had made a habit of collecting unsavory aliens in the same way regular people collected antiques or model starships.

Garrus and Joker acted as though no time had passed at all. He took most of his meals with one or both of them, ventured into the Citadel on off days. Joker had a lot of free time with the Normandy in drydock, and insisted on going into the Wards at least every other day.

"It would be easier to drop that one and buy a new one," Garrus was saying now. He looked up from whatever he was reading on his datapad and gave the hovercraft a skeptical eye. "Tell Miranda we lost it in the Collector attack. Or that it was stolen by pirates."

Kaidan laughed, wiping his now-filthy hands on his pants. An impressive array of sticks, rocks, shattered geth pieces and other assorted detritus was scattered beneath the Hammerhead. "You're probably right."

He ran the back of one arm across his forehead, stopping the sweat from leaking into his eyes. As a biotic he naturally ran a few degrees hotter than the average person, and the cargo bay was already warm. Combined with the dirt and oil already smudged on him from several hours of labor on the Kodiak, Kaidan decided it was time to call it a day.

"Thanks for the company, Garrus," he said. "I'm going to go take a shower."

"You know there's a bar on the crew deck," Garrus replied, straightening and tucking the datapad under his arm. "We could go sit for a while. Kasumi lives there usually but she's probably out stealing something. It's colder in there."

"Garrus, are you asking me out?" Kaidan quirked a mocking eyebrow at the turian.

"Why Commander," Garrus replied, fanning his face with one clawed hand. "I thought you'd never notice."

"Let's go, I need the drink," Kaidan laughed, starting for the door.

"And I need to stay away from Miranda at all costs."

It was blessedly cooler on the crew deck, and for a moment Kaidan considered sacrificing the privacy of his own cabin for the comfort of a temperature-controlled shared bunk.

"You guys really did upgrade this place if you have a lounge," he quipped as they walked down the hall. "Nothing like that on an Alliance vessel."

"I have learned that comfort is not always high on the list of taxpayer-funded projects," Garrus replied. "Oh shit, it's Tuesday," he added cryptically as the door labeled Port Observation beeped and slid open.

Kaidan glanced confusedly at the turian, puzzling over that bizarre statement for a moment before turning his attention forward and realizing why Garrus had become so suddenly dismayed.

Four sets of female, and oddly one set of salarian, eyes turned simultaneously towards them. Kasumi and Tali's faces were obscured and unreadable, but Kelly smiled warmly at the two men in the doorway. Mordin looked at them with a sort of mild curiosity.

Shepard, seated in the armchair facing the door, was furiously focused on the holo screen in the corner, her spine rail straight. Three human women and an asari strode across the screen in wildly impractical footwear, arm in arm as they passed through what appeared to be the Presidium of the Citadel. Clearly this was some manner of social gathering.

"Sorry, ladies," Garrus said, activating that strange charm he had. "And professor," he added, nodding towards Mordin. "Didn't mean to interrupt."

"No interruption," the professor replied in his oddly halting manner. "End credits. Curious program. Surprising insight into human female reproductive practices. Must watch more."

"I don't think that's a good representation of human female… anything, really," Tali said, cocking her head to one side.

"It can be." Kasumi shrugged. "Depends on the female, I suppose."

"Curious," Mordin repeated.

"We just came up to find something to drink," Kaidan interjected, his voice carefully neutral. He moved cautiously towards the bar in the corner. "We'll get out of your way in a second."

"You don't have to leave, you're welcome to join us," Kelly chirped, and instantly looked stricken. Everyone turned their attention to Shepard. A muscle jumped in her tightly clenched jaw, and her hands twitched in her lap. Her expression was strained.

"I should go," Shepard said, standing suddenly. Her tone was awkwardly firm, as though she were caught between being the commanding officer and being merely a woman with her friends. She walked stiffly out of the room, eyes focused straight ahead as she slipped past Garrus.

_Fuck_, Kaidan thought, plucking two cans from behind the bar without bothering to check what they were. "Have a good night," he said lamely, nodding to the remaining women and Mordin, who Kaidan still couldn't really understand the inclusion of.

The door hissed shut behind him, and Kaidan pressed a drink into Garrus's hand.

"That was uncomfortable," Garrus said as they started back the way they had come. "I forgot it was Tuesday."

"Tuesday?" Kaidan inquired vaguely, preoccupied with Shepard's strange reaction.

"_Sex and the Citadel_ night," Garrus replied. "Some show Kasumi watches. I guess it's about some woman who moves to the Citadel and meets other women and they do… woman things... Kasumi somehow coaxed half the female crew to join her. Every Tuesday they spend a few hours in there. Usually Miranda's there too, but I suppose she's busy wringing reports of some other poor bastard. Not sure how Mordin got involved, though."

"I see." The women of the Normandy didn't really seem like the type to have a weekly ladies' night.

"Apparently human females need to bond and form some sort of alliance. Even Jack crawls out of her pit to join them sometimes," Garrus continued. Kaidan was mildly amused at Garrus' uniquely… _turian_ assessment of the situation. "This apparently causes some fear among the males. I'm amazed you made it past the door. Even Zaeed wouldn't go in there on Tuesdays."


	5. Chapter 5

The crew deck was dark, save for the dim emergency runners along the edges of the floor and ceiling. With the crew not currently on shore leave asleep, the only sound was the low thrum of the ship generators. Even Chakwas had finally turned out the lights in the med bay and gone to bed.

Sitting on the tile before a sleeper pod damaged in the Collector attack, Kaidan felt as though he could be alone on the Normandy. It was peaceful without the chatter normally present in and around the mess hall. He had always found a certain tranquility in working with his hands, as he did now with the malfunctioning pod.

Aboard the SR-1 he rarely had time to just sit and _fix_ something. His duties as staff lieutenant kept him well occupied with ensuring the _crew_ ran smoothly, and the ship's maintenance was left to the engineers.

Sleep had proven to be a futile venture, the memory of Elizabeth's strained expression and hasty exit from the lounge eventually goading him out of bed. He had retreated to the crew deck in the hope that he would find some measure of solace in the mess of severed wires and dented metal that was the pod.

To his surprise and relief, it was working. He felt his eyelids growing heavy, his vision blurry. He set down the soldering iron and swept a hand over his face, looking towards the mess. Absently he noted the similarities between this Normandy and the original.

A small but fully-functional kitchen replaced the bank of monitors that had been his station aboard the SR-1. Chakwas' med bay had large windows where before had been solid walls. What had once been the captain's cabin- Shepard's cabin- was now the XO's, occupied by Miranda. Everything was larger, more spacious, allowing for comfort as well as efficiency.

The layout was the same, though. At least similar enough that he found himself thinking of all the time he had spent here; moments that were bizarre in their normalcy when peppered between the tense crew meetings and brutal combat as they tracked Sovereign across the galaxy.

He recalled countless meals with the crew; hours monitoring ship function from his small control center. Quailing under Chakwas' stern gaze as she chided him for not eating enough. Listening to Shepard and Williams exchange books and uncharacteristically girlish laughs over their dinners.

Sorting through Williams' few personal effects after Virmire, the only time he had ever seen Shepard weep.

The first time she had come to him as just Elle, stripped of the authoritarian façade she presented to the crew.

* * *

><p><em>When Shepard had first arrived on the Normandy, Joker had estimated her to be a 'six thruster bitch,' the type of career-officer hardass that knew every draconic regulation and enforced them relentlessly. Jenkins had been so excited about the Hero of Elysium being posted to the Normandy that he almost required clean underwear every time the XO entered the room.<em>

_Kaidan had been largely indifferent. Commander Shepard was polite and professional but they didn't interact much beyond the standard superior officer/subordinate conversations that happened in passing at staff meetings. _

_ Then the distress call had arrived from Eden Prime, and everything had gone spectacularly to shit. Jenkins was dead not five minutes after putting boots on the ground, geth were apparently flooding out of the Terminus systems and the Prothean beacon they were meant to retrieve had done… _something_ to Shepard, and promptly exploded. _

_ He sat for fifteen hours in the infirmary, wishing desperately for Shepard to wake up. Even Chakwas was unable to determine what exactly had happened to the XO, but he barely heard her notations of increased rapid-eye movement and beta waves. Shepard had shoved him down when he had gotten too close to the beacon, activating it, and then she had taken the hit._

_ He was terrified he had killed her on their first mission. _

_ The marine they had found, Williams, sat with him for a while. She was brusque and friendly, somehow optimistic despite the loss of her entire squad. Eventually she left, pulled away by Anderson to discuss her transfer to the Normandy._

_ Hope had just about abandoned him when Shepard stirred, sat up and rubbed at her eyes as though she had simply taken an abrupt nap. He tried to apologize, and she waved him off with a surprisingly good-natured flick of her hand. _

_ "You couldn't know what was going to happen," she shrugged._

_ Before he could form an appropriate response Anderson appeared and ushered them out, requiring a private audience with his executive officer._

_ Chakwas pressed a plate of food into his hand, with a firm order to eat and get some rest. Kaidan dutifully swallowed a few bites for the doctor's benefit, and once she had gone he set the plate down and returned to his station, busied himself with the work he had neglected for nearly an entire day._

_ Crouched before the softly humming bank of displays, the wires of a solitary dark holo tangled in his fingers, he didn't hear her boots tapping against the deck towards him._

_ "I'm sorry about Jenkins."_

_ He looked up, surprised to see Shepard standing there, watching him with those inscrutable green eyes. Briefly he looked back to the task at hand; a tweak and the holo flickered to life above his head. He pushed the wires back into place, shutting the small hatch on the control panel, and stood to face his superior officer._

_ "I just wanted to make sure you were alright," she continued. "Anderson told me you two were close."_

_ They had been, to a certain extent. The younger marine had recognized him from a previous mission, and seated himself with Kaidan and Joker the first night in the mess, and nearly every night afterwards. Jenkins was excitable and a shameless-if inaccurate- gossip, but he was amicable and brought a cheerful dynamic to the crew. The marine's death had shaken Kaidan more than he was willing to admit._

_ "We served together once before. It was hard on the whole crew to lose Jenkins," Kaidan replied simply. He was curiously wary of Shepard's approach. She had just recovered from a fifteen hour coma and for some reason her first concern was _his_ welfare._

_ "It was rough down there," she said, the barest hint of a question in her voice._

_ "You never get used to seeing dead civilians." Up close, without a helmet to obscure her features, he noticed a faint splatter of freckles across her cheeks. A thin scar bisected her left eyebrow and cut across the bridge of her nose. "At least you stopped Saren from taking out the entire colony."_

_ She shrugged, as though fighting through several dozen geth was a daily occurrence somewhere between breakfast and lunch. "I couldn't have done it without you."_

_ He shrugged, expertly feigning nonchalance. "We're marines. We stick together. I'm just sorry about Jenkins."_

_ Her eyes lowered then. "I wish I could have done something to save him," she said softly. The nearly imperceptible sag of her shoulders suggested to Kaidan that Jenkins' death- possibly even those of the colonists they had seen brutally converted to shambling husks- weighed heavily on her. It was strange, he had witnessed this woman efficiently and ruthlessly execute her way through Eden Prime, and now here she was looking... vulnerable. He felt the sudden urge to touch her cheek and reassure her that everything was going to be alright._

_ "You did everything right." He pushed aside the urge as quickly as it had arisen, forcefully telling himself that his _commanding officer_ didn't need his consolation. She had only come to him because he had been with her, and there was a definite bond between marines who had shared combat._

_ They spoke a while longer, and Kaidan surprised himself by answering her more personal questions. He rarely spoke to anyone about his private life or his time before joining the Alliance military. Eventually she had to leave, her presence required on the bridge. Watching her walk away, Kaidan wondered if that momentary glimpse of vulnerability had been his imagination._

_ Then she paused after taking a few steps away, and half-turned towards him._

"_Thanks for keeping an eye on me while I was down." Shepard smiled. His heart stopped. "I'm glad I've got a good marine like you on my six."_

* * *

><p>The memory was bittersweet. Somehow those few hours on Eden Prime had pushed them together and subsequently she came to see him after every completed mission, offering him more of her unguarded self every time.<p>

Every brilliantly genuine smile cracked his painstakingly erected personal defenses with the minimal effort she would exert to eject the clip from her beloved heavy pistol. He hesitantly opened up to her in turn, afraid to overstep himself in case he misread the subtle signals that indicated she was interested in becoming more than just colleagues. More than just friends.

Joker and Williams called him a coward.

"_She's got an enormous boner for you." _

_Ashley snorted from her position behind Joker's chair. "Not how I'd phrase it. But I can pretty much guarantee she wouldn't shoot you down if you wanted to, I don't know, take her somewhere nice."_

"_Not a lot of nice places to stop when you're following a crazed ex-Spectre around the Milky Way," Kaidan replied flatly, focusing intently on the display in front of him._

"_Saren won't last forever. There's always shore leave, L-T."_

Kaidan scrubbed a hand across his face, flicking off the small work light he had positioned under the sleeper pod. There was no point in trying to work, sitting in the mess was just going to keep reminding him of everything he had lost in the past two years. He sighed and stretched, deciding he may as well try and sleep.

Light suddenly spilled around the corner of the divider between the mess and the crew cabins, accompanied by the sound of the elevator sliding open. Kaidan started to stand, but paused at the silhouette that was briefly framed before the elevator doors whirred shut.

Shepard.

He sat quickly back down, even though he knew he should leave her to her privacy. It had been so long since he had seen her relaxed, he couldn't help wanting to stay.

Her attention was on the datapad in her hand as she walked towards the kitchen, so she didn't notice him crouched between the pods. She was barefoot, dressed in a plain gray shirt with the first few buttons at the v-neck unfastened, black shorts that hung halfway down her thighs and had the Cerberus emblem on one leg. Her blonde hair was flat on one side, short curls sticking straight out on the other, insinuating she had just come from sleep. Kaidan noticed the scar that had once latticed her left thigh, a souvenir of her eventful shore leave on Elysium, had been erased along with the one across her face when Cerberus rebuilt her.

Some part of him was grudgingly thankful to the organization for bringing her back from the dead, but wished they had been able to somehow leave all the little flaws and marks that he had found so fascinatingly irresistible.

Shepard filled the kettle and set it on the small stove, switching on the burner before turning her attention back to the datapad she had set on the island in the center of the kitchen. She had always been an avid reader, though Williams had often lamented the commander's taste in literature. Elizabeth had a penchant for airy mystery novels, the sort with limited emotional depth but incredibly complicated chains of investigation. Her favorite was the _Stone Salarian _series, about a cavalier C-Sec officer with a chip on his shoulder and no regard for regulations, who solved the apparently numerous unsolvable murders and robberies that occurred on the Citadel every day.

Kaidan wondered if that was what she read now, leaning with her elbows on the counter, chewing absently at one thumbnail and looking down at her story. He caught a torturous glimpse of the tops of her breasts as she shifted her weight, and Kaidan pressed the thumb and forefinger of one hand into his eyes. Shepard would destroy him if she knew he was there. Feed him to the baby krogan she kept in the cargo bay across from his own. He should have stood when she came in, borne the sting of her hard eyes long enough to get to the elevator.

The kettle howled. Elizabeth set the datapad back on the counter, turning to lift the squealing teakettle and set it on an adjacent burner. As she reached to retrieve a mug from one of the cabinets, she paused. Her brow furrowed, and she turned, her eyes falling directly on him.

He froze, in the vain hope that she was apex-predatory enough that if he didn't move, she couldn't see him.

No such luck. She went rigid, quickly averting her eyes and settling slowly back into that square-shouldered posture she assumed when he was around. Her eyes flicked over his position, the damaged pod, the toolkit next to his knee.

"Excuse me, Commander," she said, starting to turn away, datapad and kettle apparently forgotten. "I didn't realize you were there. I'll let you work."

As she turned and started briskly for the elevator, Kaidan's composure shattered, and he pushed himself to his feet. "Elle," he called, pausing at the top stair that led into the mess. "Wait."

_What the fuck are you doing? _Adrenaline surged through his chest when she stopped.

"Why do you do that?" he asked, daring to advance down the stairs. She turned her head slightly, but didn't face him. Inwardly he marveled at his own boldness.

"Do what?" Her tone was impressively controlled, giving no hint to what she might be thinking.

"You shut down whenever I'm in the room," he said, taking another step towards her. "You won't even look at me."

Slowly she turned to face him, but her eyes were leveled at the floor. Her shoulders relaxed a little, and her voice was barely more than a whisper. "You know why."

"No, I don't." He was scarcely two feet from her now, and caught a hint of her scent; gun oil and soap and the faint sharp tinge of eezo that set his own biotics on edge. Another step, nearly closing the gap between them. He had hit the relay, there was no turning back now. "What do I need to do for you to just _look_ at me?"

"Kaidan…" She placed a hand on his chest, stopping his advance, pressing the dog tags beneath his shirt into his flesh.

Her touch and the strange breathiness of her voice seared through him, and he wanted nothing more than to push her against the table behind them, kiss her and apologize for anything he had ever done, bury himself inside her and tell her loved her, had always loved her and hated himself for only telling her that once, in anger.

"Please, Elle." Iron self control clamped down, and his voice wavered only slightly.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she raised her eyes. Cerberus may have eradicated all of her scars, but they couldn't wipe away that spray of freckles. _Kiss her, idiot._ His subconscious sounded unnervingly like Joker.

Her fingers tightened over his heart. _Kiss her. _Her hair had gotten longer, threatening to fall over her eyes. _Kiss her. _Without her boots on, she was almost a head shorter than him. _Kiss her. _

"Kaidan…" she repeated. _Kiss her._ "I'm sorry, I can't… I can't do this again. Not yet."

_Kiss her anyway._

He wilted for a moment, but latched onto her last word. _Yet. _Sometime in the future, then. Kaidan casted around wildly for the right thing to say or do that wouldn't trigger her defenses and send her stiffly into the night.

A glint of gold around her neck caught his attention. The chain was too fine for dog tags. Of course she wouldn't wear tags anymore.

He hesitated a moment, then reached up and slipped two fingers carefully under the thin links. Shepard tensed as his fingers brushed against her skin, sliding his hand along the length of the chain until the pendant at the end pulled past the collar of her shirt and nestled on his fingertips.

Williams' crucifix. He brushed his thumb over the tiny gilt cross and the platinum figure splayed across it. A pang of sorrow rent his heart as he recalled this same pendant around Ashley's neck.

"Where did you find this?"

Shepard drew her hand away from his chest, closing her fingers around the crucifix and Kaidan's hand.

"I went to Alchera." She closed her eyes, her brow knitting. "I had to see the wreckage. Ashley's footlocker made it through the atmosphere somehow."

"She was the toughest out of all of us, why wouldn't her footlocker be, too?"

Elizabeth smiled faintly, and her hand tightened briefly over his.

"Oh, Kaidan," she murmured sadly. "You were always such a sweetheart."

Her fingers fell away from his, and she disappeared. The flare of light around the divider told him she was gone, back to her cabin. Back to being the Commander.

Her handprint still burned on his chest, and pressed his own hand over the spot as he stared after her. He wondered vaguely if this was what she had felt like, watching him walk away from her on Horizon.

"You definitely should have kissed her." Joker's voice crackled over the ship's intercom.

Kaidan groaned, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. "What's wrong with you, Joker?"

"My , uh… My algorithms… indicate that optimal target for intimacy occurred approximately three point four minutes ago."

"That was a poor attempt at imitating my vocal patterns, Jeff."

"_Shut up EDI just shut up._"


	6. Chapter 6

Shepard pressed her forehead against the elevator's back wall, groping blindly at the control panel with one trembling hand. She stayed that way, the brushed steel cold against her skin, for a long time, even after the subdued beep that signaled the arrival at her selected floor. The encounter with Kaidan had been… unexpected. Draining.

Maybe a little thrilling.

"Commander, do you require me to summon Dr. Chakwas?"

Exhaling sharply, Shepard straightened and rolled her shoulders. "No, EDI, thank you."

Safely back in her cabin, Shepard collapsed gratefully face-first into her bed. She carefully concentrated on whatever tedium she could, ticking off remaining ship repairs and meticulously planning shop-by-shop the places she still needed to visit on the Citadel before departing.

Maybe she could find a ship to fill the last empty spot in her miniature fleet. Or the latest _Stone Salarian_ book. Or some Thessian Sunfish to replace those that had, unfortunately, not survived the voyage through Omega 4.

For a few blessed moments she thought sleep might actually claim her.

Then Ashley's cross began to dig into Shepard's neck, and all she could think of was Kaidan standing achingly close, his hushed words, the hesitant yearning in his dark eyes, the feathery touch of his fingertips as they grazed her collar bone and sent goose bumps erupting down her arms and thighs. She had been terrified he would try to kiss her.

She had been terrified he wouldn't.

A shiver coursed down her spine.

With an exasperated sigh she flopped onto her back, one arm flying out to smack at the clock on her nightstand until throbbing music flooded the room. Kaidan was making it _exceedingly_ difficult to maintain her composure. She sat up and cast her gaze towards the bluely glowing tank set into the wall.

"When did he get so daring?"

The fish didn't know, either.

* * *

><p>For three days Shepard seemed to warm to him. If nothing else she at least didn't go rigid when they crossed paths. She even sat at the opposite end of the same table at dinner one evening. They didn't speak, but she did offer a cursory nod in Kaidan's general direction before absorbing herself in conversation with Kasumi.<p>

Then, as they always inevitably did aboard the Normandy, things went horribly awry.

Kaidan was standing on the CIC, arms crossed, staring at an ominously blinking holo display at one of the monitoring stations along the outside walls. Garrus stood to his left. Tali crouched between the seat and the wall, one hand holding a flashlight aimed into the open control panel while she consulted a schematic on the omni-tool glowing around her opposite arm.

Behind them a young ensign was animatedly explaining that she had no idea what happened, she was just trying to check her private messages and then it just started spazzing out and saying 'error' and then it smelled alarmingly like electrical fire and blinked out and now it was doing that weird flicker thing.

"Maybe it just needs to be recalibrated," Garrus suggested.

"Is there anything blocking the projectors?" Kaidan asked, rubbing his eyes. They had been working at this same monitor for an hour to no avail. He vaguely noted Shepard walking towards the cockpit.

"I checked that," Tali replied testily. "None of the wires are damaged, the lasers are clean and- _Keelah!_" She snatched her hand away as a spark shot out of the console, followed by a fizzle and a small puff of smoke.

"That was probably the-"

"Normandy crew if I could have a minute of your time." Shepard's voice buzzed over the intercom. "We will be leaving tomorrow for Omega. Anyone currently on shore leave who would like to stay on the Citadel and await our return may do so. We will return in a few days. Departure time is oh-nine-hundred tomorrow morning."

_Omega? _Kaidan frowned. He couldn't think of any reason they would need to visit that particular pirate-infested rock.

A jaunt into the Terminus Systems could very well get him killed. Being both a Spectre and a human, while at the same time _not_ possessing Shepard's Reaper-killing reputation, would probably result in him being just the right combination of 'fucked.' Coupled with the fact that disappearing into non-Council and non-Alliance space barely a month before she was supposed to stand trial would by no means endear her to the brass on Earth…

Kaidan came to the very unhappy realization that he was going to have try and stop her. Allowing Shepard to go anywhere unapproved by Anderson or the Council would not fit Anderson's stipulation of getting Shepard to Earth 'without incident.'

He weighed for a moment the benefits of taking his concerns to the commander. She would not appreciate being challenged aboard her own ship, especially not by him. A confrontation when they had finally come to a tentative truce would shatter any hope he had of slipping back into her good graces.

On the other hand, maybe she would see the logic in his argument. Elizabeth was not an unreasonable woman. There were several times aboard the SR-1 that she had accepted his suggestions for a different course of action.

He attempted to console himself with this fact as he advanced on the cockpit.

"Shepard," he called.

She was seated on the arm of the ever unoccupied co-pilot's chair, and at Kaidan's beckoning looked up from her conversation with Joker. The pilot peered curiously around the side of his chair.

"Yes, Commander Alenko?" she asked. Her half-smile nearly broke his resolve.

"May I ask why we are heading to Omega? I was under the impression we were docked for repairs until such time as we were ready to depart for Local Cluster. Ma'am."

"We were," she affirmed. "However Engineer Donnelly has requested we find some replacement FTL loopings."

"FBA couplings," Joker corrected, turning back to his holos.

"I fail to see why we can't find couplings in Council space," he continued, ignoring her slip. Shepard was many things, but an engineer was not one.

"I was informed the ones that would best suit our needs have been discontinued," she replied, pushing herself to her feet. "The best place to find discontinued parts has been, in the past, Omega. If you'll excuse me, I have preparations to make before we leave tomorrow."

She slipped past him, striding purposefully towards the CIC. An unfailingly dutiful part of himself the he was rapidly beginning to resent spurred Kaidan after her.

"Commander this is not a good idea," he said, catching up to her as she descended the few stairs at the end of the bridge.

Shepard stopped and turned to face him, eyes narrowing warily. "Is this going to be a problem for you, Alenko?"

Everyone on the deck mysteriously stopped working at that exact moment.

"You are under orders to dock at the Citadel for repairs and report to Earth in six weeks."

"Our orders are not a concern here. We were _requested_ to appear before Alliance command within the next six weeks, with time for repairs. What we do between here and there is of no concern to them," she said stiffly. "Or you."

"It is my concern, Shepard," he snapped."If you get involved in _another_ incident out there-"

"Three days," she interjected. Her voice was dangerously acidic. "We are spending three days on Omega and the trip each way. Even _I _can't involve myself in another incident." Shepard curved the index and middle finger of each hand around the word 'incident,' infusing it with incredible disdain. He got the nagging feeling that this trip was about more than just FBA couplings.

_Three days is plenty of time for you to get into and then probably out of any number of… You're on thin ice, Alenko, _he warned himself. _Keep it professional._

"I meant no disrespect, ma'am," he said, controlling his tone. Her ability to break his composure without even realizing it was infuriating. "However if something were to happen in Hegemony territory- and you are not popular with batarians right now as it is- it would not reflect well on your upcoming... engagement with Alliance command."

"This is not a discussion I am going to have in the middle of the command deck." Her voice was firm, insinuating it was not a discussion she was going to have at all. It would have been prudent to leave it at that.

"Think about it, Shep-"

"Comm room. _Now._"

She turned and strode across the bridge without a backward glance, assuming Kaidan would follow. Mordin greeted them distractedly as they cut through the Tech Lab. Kaidan had a short period of time to consider exactly how stupid it was to push the issue.

By the time the Comm Room door slid shut, a message- the origins of which were never discovered-had spread like wildfire to every omni-tool aboard the Normandy: _Shepard's gonna kill that Spectre._

Shepard stood with her back to him until the door closed, hands firmly on her hips. As soon as the beep indicated they were sealed from the rest of the crew, she whirled on him, one finger thrust angrily forward.

"You do _not_ challenge me in front of my crew," she snapped. "If you have concerns over where we are heading or why, you bring them to me privately, _not_ on the command deck. Is that clear?"

"Yes ma'am," Kaidan murmured. He didn't look her directly in the eye, the sternness of her voice recalling his time in boot camp.

"Now is there a reason you felt the intense need to pursue the issue in the middle of the CIC?"

"Commander, I'm sorry but there are plenty of safer and far less politically volatile places to find suitable engine parts," he said, hoping he sounded helpful.

"Christ, I'm tired of politics," she grumbled, rubbing her eyes. For a moment he could see Elizabeth, bringing him all the tedium and irritations of her day that he had relished hearing about on the SR-1. Then she sighed and straightened, and Commander Shepard was back. At least the anger had gone from her words, and she addressed him as a professional equal.

"There's more to this than just engine parts. I received a message from Aria T'Loak."

It took a moment for her words to soak in. Aria T'Loak was colloquially known as the 'pirate queen' of Omega, the sort of career criminal Shepard would never have dealt with prior to her death.

Of course she also would never have harbored two Cerberus agents or run ops for the Illusive Man, either. Some of his suspicions concerning Shepard's unscrupulous methods since her resurrection, suspicions he had thought long buried, were beginning to creep back.

"You… have had dealings with T'Loak in the past," he said warily.

"Yes," she replied simply. "We had mutual interests at one point."

_What does that even mean?_ "I see."

* * *

><p>"It's really fucking quiet in there."<p>

"Shh, Jack, I'm trying to hear!" Garrus waved his hand at the volatile biotic.

"I didn't come all the way up here just to stand around in front of a door with you assholes. Shepard better fuck this guy right up."

* * *

><p>"And…what did this message say?"<p>

"Just that she'd like a visit if I was passing the area anytime soon."

"A visit? You're going to take off into the Terminus for a visit with Aria T'Loak."

Shepard frowned at him. "I wouldn't just take a jaunt into Hegemony space because an asari criminal wants to play best friends," she said, affronted.

Kaidan inwardly kicked himself. Shepard had a brilliant tactical mind and despite her solid dislike for bureaucracy of any sort, she was very politically astute.

"Aria and I are not friends. She wouldn't contact me directly unless it was something very important to one or both of us," she continued. "Important enough that she would want to speak about it in person."

Kaidan considered that for a moment. He wondered what exactly the relationship between Shepard and T'loak was that Shepard would further risk her already severely tarnished reputation.

"I really think you should reconsider this, Shepard," he said, taking a step towards her. "Is whatever Aria has for you important enough to give the Alliance command more ammunition to fire at you?"

Inexplicably, she bristled. "If you're so eager to help, Kaidan, you should have started about six months ago."

Kaidan shifted uncomfortably. This conversation had just taken a _very_ hard turn to the personal.

* * *

><p>"I think she's yelling."<p>

"Fucking _finally_. Move, I want to hear. "

Jack wedged herself between Garrus and Kasumi, and pressed her ear directly against the door.

"Fascinating. Is this more indicative of standard human mating habits?" Mordin had shuffled out of his lab when half the crew stampeded through, curious about what the commotion was.

"Again, depends on the human," Kasumi said, turning her attention away from the door. "Not usually, though."

"Strange, when the Commander and Mr. Alenko are in close proximity, increase in body temperature and heart rate, production of serotonin, indicate sexual arousal. Posture indicates aggression. Very interesting. Warrants further study."

"Shepard is definitely _not_ going to let you study her mating habits. And does she know you're all out here? Because she's going to commit a series of brutal murders otherwise."

"Even _you _shambled out of your pit, Joker, don't you lecture us."

* * *

><p>"'How have you been'? What did you want me to do? Pretend I didn't just spend two years mourning you?"<p>

Somehow it had snowballed into a fully fledged argument. Despite Kaidan's best efforts to keep collected, to try and keep the encounter professional, he was all too easily slipping into pre-Horizon level anger and resentment.

"Do you know how long it was between Alchera and Horizon?" she hissed. "_Eleven days_. You had two years, I had _eleven days _to come to terms with dying and everything that had happened. What was I supposed to say? We had _one_ night on Ilos, a few good weeks after the Citadel… how was I supposed to know if you had moved on? What the _fuck _did you want me to say, Kaidan?"

_That you loved me, that you missed me, that you would come back with me, that you weren't with Cerberus. _"Moved on? That 'one night' on Ilos meant _everything _to me, Elizabeth! Obviously it didn't hold the same weight with you."

"Don't you _dare_," she growled. Her eyes were bright with some emotion he couldn't entirely identify, had never seen in her before.

Every instinct he had told him to stop, that anything more would cause irreparable damage. This was Horizon again, and just like then he couldn't halt the direction he was currently steamrolling down.

"I found out you were alive from _security footage_. Do you know what that felt like? You were alive, and you didn't contact me. Not a call, not a message. I had to find out through intelligence channels and a grainy vid from Freedom's Progress." He sounded bitter, and he knew it. "I defended you. They said you were a Cerberus agent and I told them that was impossible, that you would never compromise your beliefs like that, it was a real Cerberus agent, modified to look like you. But it wasn't, it was you."

"I wasn't given much of a choice, Kaidan," she snapped. "One minute I was dying, I was floating over Alchera and I was choking and _dying_… The next I was waking up in some medical facility and they were pushing a gun into my hands and telling me what direction to shoot. If there was _any_ other way, I would have taken it. I tried to go to the Council, I spoke to Anderson, and they all brushed me off.

I died for them, I sacrificed half my fleet for them, and all they could do was give me a pat on the head and a kick in the ass, and tell me to kindly stay out of their way. Cerberus was the only agency that was _doing_ anything about the Collectors, or the Reapers. It was either stay with them, or do nothing. I _can't_ do nothing."

She slumped, lowered her eyes, some of the indignation bleeding away. "Then I saw you on Horizon and I thought…"

_I'm sorry, _he thought. _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry._ "Thought what? That I'd drop everything and be a traitor like you?"

_Fuck. FUCK._

"I _needed_ you!" she snarled, and immediately turned away. Her shoulders trembled and she gripped the edge of the central table, knuckles white.

_Good job, asshole, she's crying. You made Commander Shepard cry._

* * *

><p>"Alright, everyone out."<p>

Joker slipped awkwardly in front of everyone at the door, shooing them away.

"It's just getting good!"

"I don't give a shit, this is getting weird, and I can guarantee she will skin everyone she find outside this door when she comes out. So, let's go."

He also knew she would lose her shit all over everyone, to possibly violent extents, if she found that the crew had been listening in to her when she was at her weakest. It was important to her to remain strong in the eyes of those she lead.

"Joker's right," Tali said, putting an arm out and sweeping the gathered crowd away. "It is wrong to keep listening here."

The pilot cast a grateful look towards the quarian.

* * *

><p>Kaidan stared at her trembling back, willing himself to somehow travel back in time about forty seconds. While his brain was apologizing, his mouth had chosen the worst possible thing to say, and then said it. He stood frozen by an ungodly combination of fear and guilt and self-directed rage, unable to make even a passing attempt and comforting her.<p>

"I needed you," she repeated, finally breaking the silence threatening to crush him. Her voice was choked. She turned, her face crumpled in fury and agony. "I needed you to come with me. I needed you to listen to me. I needed you to _trust_ me. And you just walked away."

"Elle…" He reached for her.

Her fingers locked like iron around his wrist, stopping his hand just centimeters from her face, close enough for him to feel the warmth of her skin. Her eyes suddenly burned into his, infinitely unforgiving. "_Don't_."

The one word was laced with enough ice to keep the entire crew in cryo for a year. She dropped his arm as though it were a poisonous thing. "I have no choice but to let you stay on my ship until such time as we reach Local Cluster. My suggestion to you is that you stay on the engineering deck until such time as you can disembark."

Any trace of sadness had vanished, and her face smoothed instantly into an impeccable mask of command before she turned and left. All the air in the room rushed out with her, and he was sure his lungs and possibly several more of his internal organs were going to expel themselves forcefully through his mouth.

When he finally pulled together the awareness necessary to leave the room, he was surprised to find Joker waiting, arms crossed, a decidedly un-Joker-like expression of disapproval on his face.

"You are a fucking idiot, Kaidan."

"I realize that."

"I don't really think you do. If you realized that, you would have dropped it back in the cockpit. Or, I don't know, made your move when you had the chance. So, I repeat: you are a fucking idiot."


	7. Chapter 7

Afterlife was not a place Kaidan would normally have chosen to visit, and Jacob Taylor was not someone Kaidan would normally have chosen to associate with. He knew very little about the former marine; only that Taylor was a Cerberus operative, Shepard seemed to like him and he had been with her on Horizon.

That was more than enough for Kaidan to decide he _really_ wasn't fond of the guy.

Kaidan had initially been wary of Taylor when he'd shown up belowdecks, stating that 'some of us' were going to Afterlife, and they thought he could use the time off the ship. However the engineering deck had quickly become stifling after a day and a half trapped there – partially due to Shepard's stern insistence, but mostly out of fear of seeing her – and Alenko would probably have accepted an invitation to drink with the Illusive Man himself.

When 'some of us' proved to be Garrus and Joker as well, his disposition softened somewhat. Several beers softened him some more, and he struck a conversation with Taylor. Jacob proved to be amicable, if a little blunt.

It helped that Kaidan also discovered there was nothing more intimate between Taylor and Shepard than the relationship between any two marines who had occasionally seen each other's insides after egregious war wounds.

He had just decided to relax, possibly even enjoy himself, when _they_ walked in, confident and terrifying. The men of the Normandy – and probably all of Afterlife – paused to watch their passing.

Miranda was all perfect curves and cool detachment, sleek black catsuit leaving as little to the imagination as ever. She moved with a calculated grace, frozen blue eyes surveying and instantly assessing every patron every patron she passed.

Kaidan hardly noticed her.

Elle was just ahead of Lawson. Together they were a devastatingly beautiful pair of predators, sliding through the crowd like sharks through water. Clinging grey denim pants rose from the tops of Shepard's gleaming black boots, displaying every muscle in her legs as she walked. Kaidan's gaze lingered at the hint of ivory skin that slipped in and out of view between the hem of her shirt and her belt, his throat growing dry. He realized that he had never seen her dressed in anything other than some form of standard-issue uniform.

Suddenly the room was too hot, the din of conversation too loud. The low thrum of the baseline became less a sound than a feeling, a discordant second heartbeat pounding in his chest and making it difficult to breathe. Elle was close enough to touch, she was passing only a few feet from him, and she may as well have been on a different planet. She paid him no more notice than she would offer a splatter of geth fluid on her boot.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Garrus said, "But is it true that if human females display that much skin around the collar bone and chest, they are seeking a mate?"

The question was so surprising Kaidan was able to pull himself immediately from his torturous reverie. Jacob and Joker also turned stunned looks on the turian. The pilot was the first to recover.

"Let me explain something to you, Garrus," he started, setting his glass down and casting a sagely look at the turian. "There is a subtle difference between, as you so _turian_-ly put it, 'displaying skin' to find a mate, and displaying skin to prove a point."

"And the Commander is…?"

Joker directed a meaningful glance at Kaidan. "Proving a point."

With a groan Kaidan rubbed at his eyes with one hand. Shepard's point was thoroughly proven.

"I thought they were just coming to see Aria," Jacob suggested, and indicated the two women with his glass. "Looks like they're heading up there now."

Following the gesture, Kaidan saw Shepard and Miranda starting up a set of stairs at the back of the bar, vanishing behind the column of LEDs that made up the central bar.

"Taylor, women don't dress like that for any old business meeting."

* * *

><p>"Shepard," the asari said, by way of greeting. She didn't bother to rise, merely jerked her chin in the direction of an adjacent couch.<p>

"Aria," Shepard replied, seating herself. Miranda slid fluidly onto the sofa to her left.

"You clean up nice," Aria T'loak said, running a coldly appraising eye over the marine's uncharacteristically casual clothing. Shepard resisted the urge to shift uncomfortably. Despite her protests that it was just a routine visit with Aria, Kasumi had chosen a more club-appropriate outfit than Shepard's standard hardsuit, all the while insisting that dressing 'sexily' and going out in public would somehow make her feel better.

Mostly she just felt ridiculous.

Although, if she was going to be honest with herself, the look on Kaidan's face when she'd walked by made all the makeup and the Miranda-tight pants completely worth it.

But that was petty, and she had more pressing matters to attend to.

"I appreciate the thought, but I'd really like to know why you asked me here," she said curtly.

"Cut right to the chase," Aria said, a glimmer of approval in her expression. "I like that about you Commander. No fucking around."

The asari extended an arm to the batarian standing by the stairs and snapped her fingers. A datapad appeared in the bodyguard's hand, and he passed it quickly to his employer.

"I thought you would be interested to know who I caught attempting to introduce _another_ plague into my streets," Aria explained, and extended the datapad to Shepard.

"Is this a joke, Aria?" Shepard demanded, handing the offending device to Miranda.

"Impossible," Miranda said disdainfully, and set the pad disdainfully on the table in front of her. "This is just footage from the last time the Normandy visited Omega."

"So you recognize the two men accompanying Shepard in this picture, Ms. Lawson?" Miranda quirked an eyebrow, unwilling to admit there was anything she didn't know. Aria smirked. "I didn't think so."

"You're saying you caught _me_?" Shepard inquired.

"Not you," Aria corrected. "A mostly convincing copy."

"A clone?"

"Something to that effect. I assumed it was some sort of Cerberus plot to replace you."

Miranda scoffed. "What possible reason would Cerberus have for cloning Shepard? The Commander is only valuable because of her very specific set of skills and experiences. Producing a copy would be irresponsible at best. Besides, we have the real thing."

"Do you?" Aria turned a sharp gaze on Lawson, leaning forward. "Rumor around the galaxy is that Shepard here gave the Illusive Man a glorious fuck-you and is now a free agent, as evidenced by that amazing escapade with the Alpha Relay."

"What's your point, T'Loak?" Shepard snapped, unwilling to discuss that particular 'amazing escapade' with this woman, or anyone else.

"My point is that Ms. Lawson should let me finish speaking." Looking back to Shepard, Aria settled back into her usual lounging position and continued. "As I said, I _assumed_ the source of a Shepard clone would be Cerberus. I was proven wrong, once I acquired the clone and her associates. In person, there was one _tiny_ flaw in the accuracy of this fake Commander."

Shepard raised her eyebrows, urging Aria to continue.

"She was green."

"Fuck me," Shepard breathed.

Miranda spent a moment trying to figure out why a green clone of Shepard would be worse than a regular clone of Shepard.

Then the memory of a brief encounter with a green asari flickered in her mind, and it made sense.

"I'm sorry," Miranda interjected, "But are you insinuating that the source of your clone was… a _Thorian_? It was an extremely isolated organism that evolved over millennia in a single ecosystem. The chances of there being a second one, especially outside of that specific system, are incalculably small. Not to mention that it is impossible one could have developed on Omega, this is an asteroid with no means of sustaining natural life."

"Very astute observations, Ms. Lawson," Aria said, an antagonzingly amused smile tugging at one corner of her lips.

"Don't patronize me," Miranda snipped. "What are you getting at?"

Aria retrieved the discarded datapad, inputting several commands before sliding it back across the tabletop to Miranda, who picked it up warily. She frowned as she scanned the text displayed upon it, and the narrowed her eyes at the self-proclaimed Pirate Queen.

"How reliable is this information?"

"The two men accompanying our green Spectre friend were ExoGeni employees."

* * *

><p>"They've been up there for a long time."<p>

Jacob's eyes had remained almost continuously on the staircase that had swallowed Miranda and Shepard. His earlier amiability had disappeared, replaced with the hyper-alertness of a marine anticipating ambush. It was the same sort of compartmentalization Shepard had mastered, and Kaidan understood suddenly why the two would get along.

"I'm sure if anything happened we'd know," Joker said, apparently unaffected. "The gunfire and biotic explosions would probably clue us in."

"And the swearing," Garrus added. "The Commander always-" he stopped suddenly, stiffening and putting one clawed hand to his ear. Jacob and Joker copied his gesture, and a chorus of 'yes, ma'ams' followed before they all stood. Kaidan only had to wonder what was going on for a split second before Lawson and the Commander reappeared.

They descended the stairs quickly, all pretense of this being a strictly social visit apparently forgotten. Miranda miraculously made it down the stairs and kept perfect time with Shepard's brisk pace without taking her eyes from the datapad in her hand. Their stride was quick and determined as they headed for the exit.

"I'm thinking this three-day tour just got a lot more interesting," Joker said, not even remotely attempting to hide the glee in his voice as they started after the women. "Maybe we'll get to outrun another explosion! Those are always my favorite."

Kaidan was too busy resisting the urge to say "I knew it, I knew it, I _fucking knew it_," to dignify the pilot's remark with a response. He had a sinking feeling that the Normandy was heading directly for the sort of 'incident' he warned Shepard against getting involved in.

* * *

><p>Shepard was vaguely uncomfortable.<p>

Staring at a very green image of herself floating in the middle of the comm room, flanked by two unfamiliar men was disconcerting. This was compiled on the fact that she hadn't thought to change her clothes before summoning her squad for a meeting, and Elle began to wish she hadn't let Kasumi clothe her like some kind of Reaper-Killing Barbie.

She plucked anxiously at the deep V of her neckline, shifted her weight in her shiny black boots, and began to think maybe she had time to go put on her uniform. The rest of the squad had yet to turn up, it wouldn't take more than five minutes to-

The hiss of the door sliding open stopped her train of thought. With an internal sigh she began to turn towards whichever teammate had arrived, but stopped short when her eyes alit upon the figure framed in the entrance.

Kaidan.

He froze, anxiety and possibly full-blown fear evident in his expression when he saw her. For an instant Shepard was aboard the SR-1 again, meeting the nervous gaze of her staff lieutenant as she sought his ever-logical opinion on the mission at hand.

Three years ago Shepard had found the way he became so uncharacteristically flustered around her endearing, part of the shy charm he was unaware he possessed. At the time she would have smiled, reassured him that he could call her Elle rather than Commander, and then resisted the urge to snicker at the color that would inevitably rise in his cheeks.

But that was before he had questioned her loyalties and outright called her traitor.

Twice.

"I don't have time for a self-righteous lecture right now, Commander Alenko," she said, pulling herself forcefully to the present.

The coldness of her statement spurred Kaidan out of his paralysis. He straightened, clasping his hands behind his back, defaulting to a rigid sort of parade rest.

"My apologies, ma'am, but that's not why I'm here," he said stiffly, staring at a point on the far wall rather than look directly at her.

"Then why are you here, Kaidan?" The question was sharp on her lips before she could stop it, twisting even his name into a bitter accusation. Shepard's lungs constricted when Kaidan's dark eyes flickered to her, bright with the sting of her words.

He seemed poised to speak when Miranda edged suddenly around him, slipping quickly into the room. At Lawson's appearance, Kaidan's gaze fixed again on the back of the room. He had never been more relieved to see the XO.

"Alenko is here at my insistence, Commander," she explained curtly, stopping at the command console and inputting several codes. The holo of the false Shepard was suddenly flanked by a star chart and a stream of data. She moved around the side of the display, reaching forward to tweak the holos as she continued her explanation. "He was part of your ground team when you encountered the Thorian, and again on your previous visit to Nodacrux, and as such he may have valuable insight into what we might expect there."

Shepard considered that, appraising Kaidan pragmatically, as though he were a replacement piece of armor rather than a former lover. A narrowing of her eyes insinuated she had come to a conclusion.

"Fine," she said, placing her hands on her hips and her attention on the holos. "But I reserve the right to remove him if I see fit."

"Of course," Miranda agreed absently, her fingers busily working over the orangely glowing data projected before her.

Kaidan suppressed the urge to rub the back of his neck, a nervous gesture amplified by Shepard's presence. He was grateful when the rest of the team began filtering in around him. The room filled with the hushed buzz of anticipatory chatter.

Satisfied with her adjusted, Miranda stepped back and turned her full attention to the assembled squad.

"Who here is familiar with the Thorian?"


	8. Chapter 8

"What the fuck is a Thorian?"

It may have been a mildly ridiculous notion, but Miranda Lawson had always enjoyed making a poignant first statement when she led a staff meeting. Opening immediately with the Thorian had been, she thought, particularly piquant. Everyone else in the room had possessed enough courtesy to fall into a stunned silence so absolute it was nearly possible to hear Joker beatboxing on the bridge.

Of course Jack had nothing in her biotically burned little brain that remotely resembled courtesy. Leave it to her to ruin a perfectly good opening statement. Why was she even here? Only Alenko, Vakarian, Taylor, Shepard, and Solus had been summoned, and the salarian wasn't even here yet. Probably the criminal had seen everyone else heading for the conference room and, rather than having the decency to eavesdrop in silence like Joker, decided to tag along.

Miranda almost heaved a sigh. _Almost_.

"The Thorian was a plant-based organism that evolved over thousands of years to telepathically control lesser life forms through physical contact and the production of toxic spores," she explained curtly. It was an over-simplified illustration, but she doubted Jack would be interested in, or even understand, a full description. The biotic seemed satisfied with the answer and offered no further crude interruptions.

"We definitely killed it, though," Vakarian interjected. "I was there."

"That's true," Miranda acknowledged, indicating the holos hovering before her. "However, this image was taken on Omega six days ago. The two men accompanying the apparently cloned Shepard are ExoGeni employees, apprehended by Omega security forces while attempting to release some kind of plague."

"ExoGeni?" Kaidan asked, startled. "They were run almost entirely bankrupt after their experiments on Zhu's Hope went public. Where would they get the funding to do something as complex- not to mention _illegal_ –as cloning a human?"

"According to scientists Aria questioned-"

"Tortured," Shepard muttered.

"_Interrogated,_" Miranda amended, "ExoGeni has received outside funding towards the continuation of their research into the affects of indoctrination on the human psyche. Unfortunately they were unaware of the exact _source_ of the funding. The result of this new research appears to be some sort of partially-functioning, synthetic Thorian."

"Not an entire Thorian." Mordin Solus, the very model of an overdue salarian, had finally turned up. It always amazed Miranda that for being so constantly in a hurry, the professor was never on time.

"Glad you could join us," she said, though Solus didn't really notice, his attention firmly on his omni tool display as he ambled across the room. "What did you find in the data Aria gave us?" she asked, louder this time.

"'Plague' they attempted to release on Omega not a plague at all. Thorian spores, but ineffective without Thorian present. As I said, ExoGeni did not create a functioning Thorian." Solus continued towards the control panel, and clicked in a few commands. The cloned Shepard shrank, replaced by other images fleshy, tumor-like growths stuck to the walls of a lab. "Clone-producing pods, mostly, though also some glands capable of manufacturing mind-altering spores."

"Well, that would explain Shepard's… green-ness," Garrus said.

"Not how they're actually cloning her, though." All earlier awkwardness slid away as Kaidan began to pace around the table, considering the information he had been given so far. "The Thorian had to swallow Shiala to make copies of her, I thought."

"It consumed the asari to make her part of a collective consciousness," Mordin explained. "Capable of producing clones from trace amounts of DNA through pods. Pods receive cellular information from Thorian 'brain,' and grow new version."

"But if they only have these pods, they don't have a Thorian brain," Shepard pointed out.

"No need. Let me explain." The professor paused, tapping one finger thoughtfully on his thin lips. He contemplated a moment before continuing. "Think of pod as artificial womb. Given correct genetic components, sperm and embryo, womb grows new life. Thorian provided components before, using DNA of consumed entity. Possible for scientist to take role of Thorian, inject proper genetic information, produce clone from DNA of new subject."

"You mean someone had to fuck one of those nasty tumor things?" A dry-heaving accompanied Jack's outburst. "That's the most disgusting fucking thing I ever heard, Doc."

Across the room, Miranda's eyes rolled so hard they were in danger of escaping her skull and skittering across the deck.

"Coitus is not required," Mordin continued, unfazed. "Perhaps womb was wrong analogy… Regardless, Thorian not required."

"Where would they get Shepard's DNA?" Jacob asked.

"She's bled on probably eighty percent of the galaxy," Garrus offered. "Can't be that hard to come by a little 'genetic data.'"

"The real question, I think," Kaidan said, looking cautiously at Elle through the holo, "isn't how, but why. Why Shepard?"

"Why _not_ Shepard?" Jack countered. "Best way to convince someone not to fuck with you is bring her along."

"She is pretty terrifying," Garrus agreed.

"I'd probably pee a little if I had to fight her one-on-one," Jacob said plainly.

"She's easily recognizable," Miranda added, and arched a vaguely appreciative eyebrow at the biotic. "Good point, Jack. Shepard is a valuable asset to whoever possesses her."

"Thanks, I guess," Shepard snorted. "But I think the green skin might clue people in to a clone being… well, a clone."

"Skin pigmentation could be altered, normalized. Actual cloning is the difficult part. Minimal effort to aesthetically perfect the product, once acquired." Mordin shrugged. "Curious why now, when Shepard's present reputation is… less than optimal."

Shepard's expression grew stern, and she folded her arms over her chest. "Honestly I'm not that concerned about the 'why' at this point."

"Of course you aren't," Miranda murmured flatly.

"My big concern, right now, is how we plan on stopping this," the commander finished, and gestured to Miranda to continue.

Lawson reached for the holos, manually minimizing the images of the pods and bringing up several star charts and a satellite photo of what appeared to a compound. The layout of the buildings seemed vaguely familiar to Kaidan.

"Is that the ExoGeni facility on Nodacrux?" he asked.

"The very same," Shepard replied, nodding but not looking at him.

"The creeper samples they sent there were destroyed," Kaidan said, confused.

"The creepers, but not the crucial research," said Miranda.

"I told you we should have burned that pod on the wall," Garrus said, shooting an accusatory glare at Shepard. "And the entire building."

"The pod was empty and we left a bunch of dead scientists behind. Would you want to work in a lab we shot up once already?" Shepard asked, incredulous.

"You _were_ dead for a couple years there," Kaidan pointed out. "I don't think they were too worried about a repeat visit."

Elle laughed, once, and wrinkled her nose at him in that way that meant she didn't want to admit he was right.

Then she caught herself and looked away, any hint of familiarity gone. The brief exchange was not lost on Kaidan, however. It was a face she had made at him a thousand times, both during staff meetings and their own 'personal debriefs.' He watched her purposefully ignore him for a moment, then returned his attention to the crew, who had continued the discussion.

"We are two days away from Nodacrux, if we make the jump now," Miranda was saying. "I suggest we head there and inspect the ExoGeni labs, then eliminate or confiscate any relevant data."

"Nuke it from orbit," Jack suggested helpfully.

"Not going to lie to you, Miranda, I think I agree with Jack on this one," Jacob said, crossing his arms. Jack smirked.

"I'm actually with them," Garrus agreed. "I don't even want to mess around with it."

"I don't know," Shepard said, brow knit as her eyes coursed over the image of the pod-filled lab. "There's probably merit in actually visiting the place, seeing what's what."

"There may be information on other facilities. Nuking the place won't allow us access to whatever databases they have on site," Kaidan said, to his own mild surprise. This was the sort of incident he had warned Shepard against, and now he was just enabling her. "If there's one thing we know ExoGeni does, its make backups and send redundant samples elsewhere. The last thing we want is more green Shepards turning up at an even more inconvenient time."

"Commander Alenko makes a fair point," Miranda said, not even remotely attempting to hide the smugness in her voice. "Scorched earth tactics serve no purpose here. We need to be sure there are no other, similar, Shepard-producing facilities anywhere else."

"Boots on the ground in two days, then," Shepard said, putting her hands on her hips with an air of finality. The rest of the squad began to shuffle out. "Miranda, Garrus, you're my ground team."

"Yes ma'am," Garrus called over his shoulder.

Behind him, Jack fumed. "I never get to do anything fun."

* * *

><p>Even after two years, the N7 armor still seemed unwieldy. It was heftier in the shoulders and the thighs, the collar high and wide. Kaidan felt weighted down, restricted, despite all the assurances of the Alliance technicians that his range of motion should be unaffected by the additional plating. He should have insisted on keeping his lighter Onyx armor. Even if it wasn't standard issue, it was familiar.<p>

Standing in the elevator to the CIC, he rolled his shoulders and shook his boots, testing the resistance of the thick underarmor weave. At least, he supposed, his helmet was the same. Elle called it creepy, with its individual eye openings, but he liked the extra protection. She, on the other hand, never wore a helmet if she could get away with it.

"_If they get through the kinetics I'm fucked anyway, helmet or no,_" she had explained when he finally got the courage to ask, sometime before Therum. "_Once my shields are down the ceramics aren't going to do shit against a decent bullet_. _Helmets aren't worth the loss of field of vision_."

As his thoughts drifted to her – it was a long ride from the lowest deck to the bridge – Kaidan wondered why Elle had suddenly requested him for her ground team. Garrus knocking on his door and telling him to suit up had been a surprise, though not entirely unwelcome. He hoped it was a sign that Shepard was easing up a little since Kaidan had agreed with her in the staff meeting.

Then the elevator door hissed open, and he was eye-to-eye with Shepard's Carnifex.

"Uh," he said bravely.

The hand cannon didn't respond. It did, however, retreat to Shepard's shoulder as she pulled her arm quickly away. She seemed equally surprised to see him.

"Where are you going all dressed up?" she asked, at the same time as he inquired, "Why are you pointing your gun at the elevator?"

"The ExoGeni lab," he said, as she waved a thermal clip and replied, "It wasn't loaded."

They stared at each other, both mildly confused. Kaidan took the silence as an opportunity to think that he'd rather have Elle confused at him than angry or, worse, emotionless. Shepard wondered, before she could remind herself she was supposed to be indifferent, if the thicker N7 armor gave as good a view of Kaidan's ass.

"You're not part of the ground team," she said finally, again at the exact instant that he said, "That didn't answer my question."

"Garrus told me to come up here." "I was checking the sights."

"Stop that," they snapped simultaneously.

"Did you guys rehearse that?" Chambers was staring, awestruck. She quickly turned back to her terminal as Shepard slammed the clip back into her gun.

"Garrus instructed me to report to you," Kaidan repeated.

"And Miranda instructed me to tell Kaidan to report to you," Garrus chimed in from where he was inspecting his rifle, across the CIC.

"And I told Miranda to instruct Garrus to-"

"Stay out of it, Joker," Shepard said, leaning around the galaxy map to glare down the bridge. The intercom went silent, and the Commander returned her attention to Alenko.

"We can't afford to squander such a useful resource," Miranda said as she exited the Armory. Kaidan was surprised to see her wearing an actual glossy black hardsuit, lighter than his own or Shepard's but a hardsuit nonetheless. "Commander Alenko is both an N7 operative and a Spectre, and has faced Thorian clones in the past. He's far too valuable an asset to leave moping in the cargo bay."

Shepard collapsed her pistol and stuck it to her hip, then folded her arms over her chest and looked detachedly to Kaidan. "True," she consented, grudgingly. She glanced between Garrus and Miranda. "But which of you is going to stay here instead?"

"Neither of us," Miranda scoffed. "There's absolutely no reason why there can't be four people on the ground at the same time. Especially if we don't know what exactly to expect down there."

Twenty minutes later Kaidan found himself in the Kodiak with a smug Miranda and a resigned Shepard. Garrus busily checked and rechecked the sights and clip on his sniper rifle, purposefully oblivious.

"Heat signatures in the facility are consistent with previously recorded Thorian creepers, as well as several that could be mature humans," EDI said mildly as the shuttle slid roughly into the atmosphere. "Whether these are clones or scientists, I am unable to tell."

"Thanks, EDI," Shepard said, her demeanor growing more serious the closer the Kodiak got to the ExoGeni lab. By the time they reached their destination, a few kilometers from the facility proper, she was all business.

"Miranda and I are out first," Shepard said, slipping a small breather mask over her nose and mouth. Miranda followed suit. "We'll approach from the south. Garrus, Alenko, you'll get off on the north side of the facility and approach from that direction. We'll rendezvous in the center once we know the courtyard's clear."

"Yes ma'am," they said together.

"See you on the other side," she said with a curt nod, the closest she would ever get to a goodbye during a mission. The Kodiak's airlock hissed open, and she and Miranda hopped quickly out.

The roar of the shuttle's idling engines vanished as the door slid shut again. Kaidan watched Shepard begin her advance, rapidly shrinking as the Kodiak pulled up and flew away.

"I see she still doesn't wear a real fucking helmet," he sighed, putting his own armored forehead in his palm.


	9. Chapter 9

_**Author's note**__: took a little liberty with the layout of the ExoGeni facility there, in the interest of an exciting story. Also because I couldn't really remember how many buildings there were! Elaborated a little on the Nodacrux ecosystem as well. Thanks to Mass Effect Wiki for having info on every planet in the galaxy. _

* * *

><p>Nodacrux from orbit was a lush and welcoming garden planet. It boasted the sort of oxygen-rich atmosphere that would make a man feel especially alive. Local flora was green and the sky blue, which was the kind of environment that made people line up to become colonists. There was little in the way of indigenous fauna other than several species of large insect and docile 'space cows', and while large insects made prospective colonists a little nervous, they weren't actively dangerous.<p>

From orbit, it was the perfect candidate for human colonization.

Unfortunately for Garrus and Kaidan, they weren't in orbit.

Nodacrux on the ground was damp and hot, the air thick and moist and visor-fogging. The humidity was almost tangible, like wading through waist-deep water. The same man who would feel rejuvenated by the oxygen-rich air would go into anaphylactic shock about ten minutes later, due to the impossibly large motes of pollen spewed forth by every otherwise unassuming shrub the planet had to offer.

Brutal thunderstorms regularly split the skies during the rainy season, oxygen-fueled lightning scorching the earth and sparking immense wildfires. The mud caking their boots and the dark clouds retreating far to the east suggested just such a storm had recently passed.

The entire planet was a miserable, oppressive rainforest without the luxury of centuries-old trees for shade.

However, if things went well, they would be inside soon. They might have to face an army of creepers and potentially several clones of Shepard, but at least it would be air conditioned.

As he knelt before the facility's back-door holo lock, Kaidan wondered how Shepard and Miranda could handle the oppressive humidity with only breather masks. He was sweating profusely even inside his temperature-controlled hardsuit, the women had to be nearing heatstroke.

"So…" Garrus started, taking a position over Kaidan with his rifle raised at the door. "You want to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?" Kaidan frowned behind his visor, and flipped open the lock's manual input panel.

"You and Shepard, I guess?" Garrus replied, sounding a little lost. "It sounded a little… tense on the radio a minute ago."

"There's really nothing I'd rather talk about less." Where was this coming from? He and Garrus had never been particularly close on the SR-1. Friendly, sure, but not talk-about-your-feelings buddies. Besides, he had connector pins to trace and match.

"I know Kasumi and Tali went and talked to Shepard after the… incident… and I thought maybe you needed to do the same, since we have some time," the turian shrugged. "I don't know if human males need the same sort of support web the females seem to develop."

"That 'incident' was a week ago," Kaidan said, shaking his head. Two more pins…

"Yeah," Garrus agreed. "But there's no chance of Shepard overhearing when we know she's half a mile across the compound."

"True… but I still really don't want to talk about it," Kaidan sighed. "Not that there's a lot to say, anyway. Really, it's just that I develop such a severe case of FIMS every time she walks into the room that now I don't think she'll ever willingly talk to me again."

"FIMS?" Garrus inquired.

"Foot in mouth syndrome," Kaidan replied flatly. Garrus fell silent, contemplating the intricacies of nonsensical human idioms. Kaidan took advantage of the pause to complete the lock hack, and the holo on the door flashed green.

"We're in," he said, pressing his hand to the side of his helmet.

"_Miranda's almost… okay, we're in,_" Shepard's voice buzzed over the radio.

Across the compound, Shepard and Miranda were breaking into a small building nearly identical to the one Kaidan and Garrus had just hacked their way into. The complex had three buildings, two small outbuildings and a larger main facility. The plan was to clear the small buildings separately, and move onto the large labs as a team.

"_According to the schematics these smaller buildings are storage and live specimen containment,_" Shepard continued._ "Watch for hostiles, radio if you encounter resistance._ _Keep an eye out for relevant information_."

"Yes, ma'am," Garrus and Kaidan said together, and Kaidan pulled his assault rifle – another N7 unfamiliarity – off his back as he stood. He balanced it with one hand, and slid the other over the lock.

The interior of the building was dark. They moved slowly into the blackness, and after a moment Kaidan's helmet adjusted to the gloom and lit his surroundings in the hazy green of night vision.

He took another step, and then everything around him exploded.

"Ow, fuck!" he snarled, clapping one hand over his eyes.

"_What was that?_" Shepard snapped.

"Sorry," Garrus apologized. "Saw the light switch."

"_Seriously_?" Miranda said. They could hear Shepard snickering behind her before the line went out.

Kaidan groaned and pulled his hand away from his helmet, blinking around at the now well-lit room. A bank of terminals lined the lefthand wall, a door with crates stacked around it against the right. The far side of the room was bisected by a large glass window, behind which were several unoccupied operating tables. Several Thorian pod clung to the wall, but they were punctured and empty.

"Computers and crates in the first rooom," Garrus said into the radio. "And an empty lab with some unoccupied pods."

"_Similar here,_" Shepard replied. "_Alenko, see if you can get anything useful off of those terminals._"

Re-collapsing his rifle, Kaidan moved to the first terminal and switched it on. Garrus stood behind him, gun aimed outward towards the entrance and the other door. With his omni-tool Kaidan began uploading the data from the terminal to the Normandy. EDI could sort it and pull anything relevant, they didn't have time to do it now.

"I should have followed her, on Horizon," he said, after a while. Kaidan wasn't sure what prompted him to suddenly answer Garrus' earlier question. Probably the pressing silence of the lab. "Walking away was the stupidest fucking thing I have ever done."

"I thought you didn't want to talk about it." Garrus glanced at him briefly, then looked back towards the door.

"She practically begged me to come with her, and what did I do? I called her a traitor. And then told her to 'be careful.' Who does that? What the _fuck_ was I thinking?" Kaidan continued, for some reason the words pouring out of him.

"Really, its okay, I was just being polite before-"

"Then I did it again! I finally got her to open up a little, and not two days later I made the same fucking mistake," he growled, a week's worth of self-direction frustration suddenly erupting out of him. It was just as well they were well away from Shepard, or any of the Normandy crew. He'd have a dozen eavesdroppers outside his door. "Joker was right, I should have made my move in the mess the other night."

"Seriously, Kaidan, you don't need to- wait, what happened in the mess the other night?" Garrus lowered his rifle, turning to face the marine.

"_Nothing_ happened in the mess the other night," Kaidan sighed, switching on the second terminal. "And that's the problem. She was right there, she was actually talking to me, and I let her slip away. Again."

"At least she let you on the ground team," Garrus offered.

"Ugh, and that stupid letter I sent her," he groaned, officially steamrolling through his entire failed relationship. Garrus shifted, picking absently at a chip in his rifle, trying to hide his discomfort.

"I didn't even know you wrote her a letter." It was all the turian could think to say.

"Yeah, about a week after Horizon, I got really trashed and wrote this stupid message about how sorry I was and how broken up I got over her death. And I mentioned that one awful date I had with Dr. Michel, like including the fact that I had drinks with another woman would somehow appease my already angry ex-girlfriend. Then I told her to be careful again. All I ever seem to be able to fucking tell her is 'be careful.'"

"It's a solid statement."

"But it's not like she's entirely innocent, either," Kaidan added, almost as an afterthought as Garrus returned to his watch duties. "Zero contact for two years and when I do see her again she's a Cerberus operative, and all she can say is 'How have you been'?"

"Well to be fair you didn't give her much of a chance to explain," Garrus said, glancing sidelong at his companion. "She tried."

Kaidan heaved a sigh. "I know," he said, deflated. "You know, Horizon is the only time I ever told her I loved her."

"We, uh… we kind of have a mission here, Kaidan," Garrus interjected. This was taking a turn for the melancholy, and he was steeply regretting ever broaching the topic. Kasumi had insisted that maybe Alenko needed to talk about his feelings, and it had seemed only polite to ask. Usually the man was so stoic and self-possessed, Garrus didn't think Alenko would _actually_ open up to him.

That was the last time his listened to Kasumi.

"Sorry," Kaidan said, sighing again. "I don't know why I could say all that shit to you and not to Elle."

"If it makes you feel any better, I bet Shepard and Miranda are having a similar conversation right now. Kasumi tells me your females tend to open up to each other with a greater ease than the males."

* * *

><p>"Shit, Sex and the Citadel is on tonight isn't it?" Shepard glanced down at her omni-tool, frowning, then sighted back down her pistol. She'd forgotten it was Tuesday.<p>

"Yeah," Miranda replied, hacking her way into the third terminal. "Not until nine, we have ten hours. I still haven't watched last week's episode though. What happened?"

"Well," Shepard started, "Moira finally dumped that salarian doctor. The one who always wore that fake hair, to look more human?"

"Mr. Wig?"

"Yeah, that guy. Anyway she dumped him, and then Sarah finally took that job at the elcor embassy…"

* * *

><p>It took close to an hour, but eventually all relevant data was uploaded from the ExoGeni terminals to the Normandy.<p>

"Does anyone else think it's strange that we've been here for so long and we've gotten _no_ response?" Kaidan asked.

"_If it's like last time, the only people here are scientists and they've gone to ground_," Shepard replied. Kaidan thought he detected a noted of uncertainty in her voice. "_Keep your comms open. We're moving into the next room._"

Garrus and Kaidan did the same. Rifles up, they positioned themselves of either side of the door. Vakarian reached out to flick a hand across the holo, and snatched it back as the door slid open.

The lights flicked on automatically as the door opened, and they leaned around the edges of the door. This room had no glassed-in lab, merely stacks of crates and a small railing-lined upper level.

"Someone's been here," Kaidan whispered as they advanced through doorframe.

"_Dead creepers?_" Shepard hissed over the comm.

"Yeah," Garrus replied. "Fresh."

Thorian thralls were scattered around the room, lying in still-congealing pools of dark blood and ichor. They had fallen in a path leading to the stairs to the second level.

"Bullet holes," he noted, turning the thing over with a nudge of his boot. He crouched next to it.

"_Same here_," Shepard said. "_Recent._"

"Kaidan," Garrus said, warningly. The turian stood over him as Kaidan scanned the corpse with his omni tool.

"Just a second," he said, running the tool over each bullet hole in turn. "Looks like shredder rounds. Probably fired from a sniper rifle, a Viper or a-"

"Alenko you really need to see this," Garrus snapped.

Kaidan looked up from the dead creeper, and froze. A pod was stuck to the wall nearest to them, trembling and oozing.

"That's… not good," Kaidan murmured.

The pod burst.

Launching to his feet and stumbling backwards, Kaidan brought his rifle to bear. A very naked green Shepard slithered out of the pod and fell wetly to the ground. She rested on her hands and knees for a moment, then raised her eyes. As she stood, green skin slick with whatever fluid she had previously been floating in, Kaidan noted that other than her flesh tone this was a convincing copy of Shepard.

_Very_ convincing. Kaidan knew he should pull the trigger, but couldn't quite bring himself to do it.

"You shouldn't be here," Shepard rasped, and lurched forward, wisps of dark energy trailing off her hands. "I'll kill-"

Her head exploded in a shower of green blood and brain.

Garrus and Kaidan whirled, guns raised again.

"She does have great tits," growled a man standing on the upper level, presumably the one had killed fake-Shepard. His sniper rifle was now trained on them. "Now drop your weapons."

* * *

><p>"What's going on over there?" Shepard snarled, turning away from the empty pod Miranda was scanning. Gunfire had erupted over the radios. "Vakarian? Alenko? Do either of you copy?"<p>

Silence, then static. Or maybe more gunfire.

"Garrus! Kaidan!" she heard the note of desperation in her voice and didn't really care. "_Someone fucking answer me_!"

"_We're still alive_." Garrus' voice crackled over the radio, punctuated by gunfire. "_Someone snuck up on us, and we have at least two active clones here._"

"Shit," Shepard hissed. "Hold position! We're coming over there!"

Miranda was already running for the door when Shepard dropped her hand from the comm.

* * *

><p>When the other two Shepards, equally naked but somehow armed with shotguns, had appeared across the room the man with the sniper rifle had ducked immediately behind his railing. Kaidan had thrown up a barrier and vaulted over the stack of boxes behind him, Garrus close on his heels.<p>

One clone was down in a few seconds, courtesy of Garrus' sniping. The other took cover, resulting in a sort of three-way Mexican standoff.

"Shiala's clones weren't naked," Garrus noted.

"Not the time to worry about it," Kaidan replied. He rose from his crouch to peer over the edge of his cover. A spray of shotgun shells clanged off the crate just below his head.

"Well," Kaidan said, ducking down again, "At least she's not as good a shot as the real Shepard."

The real Shepard chose that moment to burst into the room, Miranda close behind her. Fake-Shepard lunged from her cover, firing wildly as she sprinted for an adjacent crate, bullets hissing against Elle's kinetics.

"Fuck this," Shepard growled, and dark energy crackled around her. She surged across the room in a streak of blue, slamming into her clone, knocking it forcefully to the ground. The fake started scrambling to her feet, but the original wasted no time putting two incendiary rounds into her green copy's head.

Shepard pulled her breather mask off, letting it dangle around her neck as she scowled down at the thoroughly killed clone.

"Jesus, that's weir- _agh_!" Shepard stumbled forward as a sniper round splintered off her shoulder plate.

Kaidan sprinted across the room as the rest of the squad opened fire on the mysterious man on the second floor. He reached Shepard as she was pushing herself to her feet, grabbed her arm and dragged her behind the row of lockers the clone had used for cover earlier.

"Are you alright?" he asked, urgently checking her shoulder and cupping her cheek in one hand, searching her face for signs of injury.

"I'm fine," she grunted, pulling her face away from his touch. She shrugged off his other hand, rolled her shoulder experimentally. "It didn't penetrate."

Kaidan breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short lived as he realized the firefight was still in progress on the other side of the lockers. He drew his weapon, and peered through the sights at their new attacker. The man was trading shots with Garrus, his face obscured by what looked like half a helmet with the same two-eyehole design as Kaidan's own.

"We know who this guy is?" Shepard asked, moving into a crouch.

"No," Kaidan said.

"One way to find out," Shepard murmured, and stood up. She fired a single shot, which ricocheted off the man's chest plate. He turned to face her, and she ducked again.

"Still alive, you daft green bitch?" the man snarled. "I killed about fifteen of you fucking demon she-dogs already, one more won't be a problem even with your fucking friends here!"

Shepard's eyes went wide. "Hold your fire," she said, and lunged forward to knock Kaidan's rifle upwards, sending his burst into the ceiling rather than the sniper's head. "Hold your fire!"


	10. Chapter 10

"What the hell was that, Elle?"

Kaidan looked incredulously at Shepard. She had pulled him back down into cover after sending his shot wildly off-target, and now was directing Miranda and Garrus to stop shooting as well.

"Trust me," she said, and holstered her pistol. "I know what I'm doing."

With that, she held her hands over her head and, to Kaidan's horror, slowly stood up.

"I'm not a clone!" she called. "It's really me!"

"Like you copies haven't tried that shit before," the man called back, and fired. The bullet rang off Shepard's kinetics, and to her credit she didn't even flinch.

"For fuck's sake, Massani, I'm not even green!"

"Science is capable amazing things, love," he replied. Another shot, and her shields beeped a frantic warning. Kaidan, peering around the lockers and watching the sniper, was on the verge of pushing Shepard over so she wouldn't get herself killed.

"Keep it up you grizzled asshole, I'll tell the whole squad about your azaleas!"

The man – Massani? – lowered his rifle and pushed his mask up to scowl at Shepard. "You wouldn't, you awful goddamn harpy."

"Fucking watch me!" Shepard looked to where Garrus and Miranda were watching the exchange in stunned silence. "Did you know Zaeed likes to garden?"

"I didn't know that," Garrus said, and looked up at the sniper.

"Well, he does," Shepard said. "He told me when he retires he wants to-"

"Christ's sake, stop!" Massani cried, slinging his rifle over his shoulder and putting his hands up in surrender. "Fine, it's really you!"

Shepard smiled smugly, crossing her arms over her chest. Massani turned and started down the stairs.

"That man is like herpes," Miranda grumbled, standing and pushing her yellow HUD-glasses up onto her head as she crossed to where Shepard and Kaidan stood. "I finally think he's gone and he just pops right back up at the most inconvenient time."

"You've got herpes, Ms. Perfect Genes?" Massani asked, emerging from the stairs and striding towards them.

"It's a figure of speech, you cretin," Miranda growled.

"If you say so," he said, and laughed. The sniper slid up next to Shepard and clapped her soundly on the rear. "Glad you're the real thing, sweet cheeks."

Kaidan was sure he was about to witness a murder, but all Shepard did was roll her eyes and elbow the man in the side.

"Yeah, thanks for the bullet, asshole," she said, indicating her shoulder and the dent in her armor.

"How was I supposed to know you weren't another clone?" he shrugged, unapologetic.

"I'm sorry," Kaidan interjected, "but who are you, exactly?"

Massani turned his mismatched eyes on Kaidan, wolfish smile never faltering. "Zaeed Massani," he said. "Now Garrus and Miranda here I know, but who the fuck are you?"

He recognized the name, if not the grizzled face. Massani was a well-known, wanted mercenary, apparently another in a long line of unsavory friends Shepard had picked up. Kaidan unlatched his helmet and pulled it off, scrubbing a hand over his sweaty face. Protection be damned, it was hot as hell and his patience was wearing thin.

"Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko, Alliance Navy," he said, tucking the helmet under his arm and leveling a stern gaze on the mercenary.

Massani's eyebrows shot up, and a bark of scornful laughter escaped his scarred lips as he looked incredulously at Shepard.

"_Really_?" he said, jerking a thumb at Kaidan, who scowled. "_This_ precious little dipshit is the one you spent three days crying into your beer about?"

Shepard heaved a sigh. "Just stop right there," she said.

"Three days?" Kaidan asked, before he could stop himself.

"What are you even doing here?" Shepard asked, outright ignoring Kaidan.

"I could ask you the same bloody thing," Massani replied.

"We were told that ExoGeni was creating clones of Shepard at this facility, with the intent to distribute them around the galaxy," Miranda said. "That doesn't explain why you-"

"Wait, wait," Massani interrupted, cutting off Miranda with a wave of his hand. "You _knew_ you'd be facing down a legion of the most unkillable marines in the galaxy?"

"Yes," Shepard shrugged. "Is that a problem?"

"Only if you want to _live_, you daft bitch," Zaeed scoffed. "You knew you were walking into this kind of firefight and brought the princess, the cockatoo and the _fucking flower_ to defend you?" He indicated Miranda, Garrus, and Kaidan in turn.

"What's a cockatoo?" Garrus whispered, leaning towards Kaidan.

"What the fuck were you thinking? Where's Grunt? Or Taylor? Fuck, I'd even accept Legion at this point."

"On the ship, in orbit…How bad is it here, exactly?" Shepard asked, frowning.

"It's taken me four days to clear two tiny buildings, you tell me," Zaeed said.

"You've been here for four days?" Miranda asked.

"Yeah, and I'm hoping not to make it five. Did you bring a shuttle? How quick can we get off this god-forsaken planet?"

"We aren't going anywhere until we're sure this is the only facility of its kind," Shepard said. "Or at least until we clear the main building and destroy whatever other clones are around here."

"You know, if even Massani wants to run away, I think we should seriously consider radioing for the shuttle and just going with Jack's 'nuke it from orbit' plan," Garrus said.

"Five of us should have no trouble handling whatever's left around here." Shepard put her hands on her hips. "What kind of resistance have you met already, Zaeed?"

"Zombies and clones everywhere," he replied.

"Very informative," Miranda said.

"Anything more specific?" Shepard urged.

"Not really."

"Alright. Well, I guess we will find out when we get there," Shepard said, and pulled her breather mask back up over her mouth. Zaeed did the same, and Kaidan replaced his helmet.

"Fucking insane," Zaeed muttered as they proceeded to leave the building.

The quintet advanced quickly across the grass to the main facility, Shepard at the lead, everyone with their guns up. Once at the entrance, Shepard beckoned Kaidan forward to hack to the holo-lock. She stood over him as he knelt and opened the control panel, gun aimed at the door and ready to shoot anything unfriendly that came through it.

Not for the first time that day, Kaidan had a tiny flashback to missions three years done.

"So," Garrus said, glancing sidelong at Zaeed. "Gardening, huh?"

"I will pull those flaps off your face with my bare hands," the mercenary growled.

"Children," Shepard warned.

"Got it," Kaidan said, clicking the panel closed. He remained crouched, drawing his rifle and reaching to slide his hand over the holo but pausing before completing the action. This was a well-practiced routine, easy to slip into after even three years. He glanced up at Shepard. "Ready?"

"Ready," Shepard said, jaw tightening.

Kaidan touched the lock.

All they were confronted with was a short hallway. At least the lights were on in this building. Shepard slipped past him, advancing slowly down the hallway to the door at the opposite end. Kaidan pushed to his feet, sticking close to Shepard's six, gun aimed over her left shoulder.

She checked behind her to be sure everyone was behind her, and Shepard opened the next door. It was a large single room, glassed-in holding tanks against all three surrounding walls. Banks of monitors were aligned near each tank. Two of the tanks were empty.

"Pods," Shepard said, sweeping her eyes across the room. A collection of the tumor-like growths clung like a grotesque beehive to the wall in the tank at the opposite side of the room, but most of them appeared to be evacuated.

"The look empty," Garrus said as he moved into the room.

"What happened to the occupants?" Miranda wondered.

"Maybe Zaeed took care of them," Shepard said.

"Uuuuurrrgh."

"You could just say no," Miranda grumbled.

"Creepers!" Kaidan hissed. Everyone turned in the direction he was currently facing.

"What… is it doing?" Garrus murmured.

A lone creeper stood in a shadowed corner of the room, partially obscured by a row of computer terminals. It moaned quietly and rocked back and forth, but it didn't appear to have noticed the squad currently staring at it. Others were curled at it's feet, long clawed hands wrapped around their legs and heads between their knees.

"They're sleeping, I think," Kaidan explained. "On Feros they were dormant until a clone showed up to direct them."

"Well at least that means there's no clones around, right?"

As soon as Garrus said it, the standing creeper let out a chilling, raspy scream and lurched forward. Five bullets slammed into various parts of its body, and it fell broken to the ground.

"You had to say that, didn't you?" Zaeed accused, shooting a withering glare at the turian.

"Cover!" Shepard suggested loudly, ducking behind the nearest row of terminals. Garrus and Zaeed followed her to the left, while Miranda and Kaidan dove right.

The fourth nude Shepard of the day emerged from a door at the far end of the room, followed by the fifth and a surge of creepers.

"This dream was a lot sexier when I had it," Zaeed muttered, taking aim at and promptly killing one of the naked Shepards. Creepers began exploding around the fallen clone as the rest of the squad opened fire.

Shepard made a disgusted noise, and lowered her pistol for a moment to throw out a line of small mass-effect fueled explosions. The remaining clone dodged it easily, but the clumsier creepers were sent flying.

"That's new," Kaidan noted, crouching to reload his rifle.

"We upgraded her implants when we rebuilt her," Miranda said, between SMG bursts. She thrust her omni-tool forward and a monitor across the room burst into flame, catching several thralls in the blast.

"Shepard!" Garrus cried, and Kaidan's attention was jerked away from his target. Elle was vaulting over her cover, shotgun out. She physically struck down several encroaching creepers, firing point blank into others.

What the hell was she doing?

"Get the clone!" she snarled over her shoulder, dodging the acid a thrall attempted to vomit on her face.

As if on cue the clone stood to take aim at Shepard, and was almost instantly struck down by two sniper rounds, one in the neck and one in the cheek.

Of course. She was drawing the only armed target out of cover. Kaidan had almost forgotten just how incredibly reckless Shepard could be.

The last thrall went down in a hail of shotgun fire. With a hissing click, a steaming thermal clip fell from Shepard's empty weapon. She replaced the clip quickly, then collapsed and holstered it.

"That was fun," she said, hooking a finger in her mask and pulling it down. "Ready to go down a floor?"

"No," Zaeed said. "Not really."

"You can wait here then," she replied, and started for the door the clones had come through. The mercenary heaved a sigh and followed her.

"Don't we want to check these terminals?" Miranda asked, falling into step next to Shepard.

"We can get them on the way out," Shepard said. "We can't complete an upload if we're under constant fire by whatever's still waiting downstairs."

Miranda gave no further protest as they proceeded down the stairs to the next level.

* * *

><p>"Jeff."<p>

Joker grunted to indicate he was listening, but didn't look up from his magazine.

"_Jeff_," EDI repeated, growing insistent.

"What, what?" the pilot asked. "I'm listening to the comm feed, they haven't called for transport or backup, what the hell is the problem?"

"Someone is attempting to access my systems."

"Oh for fuck's sake," Joker groaned, sitting forward. His tone was flippant, but something alarmingly like panic was tightening around his innards. "Not again. Can you tell who it is?"

"It would appear to be-"

EDI vanished as the cockpit was engulfed in darkness.

* * *

><p>The lower floor was a single large room, containing only a waist-high pedestal with a laptop perched atop it in the center of the room. A platform ran around the entire length of the room near the ceiling, forming a sort of second-level observation deck. Doors were set in each wall above the platforms.<p>

They advanced slowly on the pedestal, watching for any sign of movement on the upper level. When they reached the laptop, Shepard frowned magnificently.

"Zaeed," she said slowly.

"Yeah?"

"You never told me why you were here."

"I was told Vido was hiding here somewhere, and since you lost me my last opportunity I figured I should jump on this one," he replied. He snorted a bitter laugh. "Apparently the information was wrong."

"Who told you that?"

"The Illusive… oh, that fuck-knuckle," Zaeed breathed.

"We need to leave," Shepard snapped. She turned and pointed at the door. "_Now_."

The holo-lock on the exit flickered red. The laptop's display, which had previously shown the Cerberus logo, flashed to show a man silhouetted against the blue glow of a dying sun. Inhuman cybernetic eyes glinted in the faint orange flare of a lit cigarette.

"Shepard," the Illusive Man said, remarkably jovial. "Glad you could make it."


	11. Chapter 11

"Joker! Joker, what happened?"

Chambers was stumbling down the bridge, squinting in the dim light of the emergency runners along the floor. The backup generators seem to have kicked on, but only for the barest of necessary functions. Joker was frantically trying to bring up as many systems as he could, fingers flying over his ominously flickering console.

"I have no idea," he snapped over his shoulder at Kelly. "EDI! EDI can you hear me?"

The pilot leaned out of his chair and rapped his knuckles against the AI's transmitter. He got no response. A flare of light outside the viewport drew his attention.

Four ships dropped out of FTL around the Normandy, and began to creep towards the disabled frigate.

"Shit," he hissed. "Shit!"

Kelly bent over Joker's console and slapped her hand against the comm button.

"Normandy to ground team," she said, a definite note of panic in her voice. "Ground team!"

"They can't hear us," Joker said, batting her away so he could slide awkwardly to his feet. "Go make sure the crew's okay, start getting to the escape hatches if we have to."

He had to get to EDI's core. Hopefully the elevator was available this time.

* * *

><p>"Illusive Man," Shepard said, with a nearly imperceptible tilt of her head. Her voice was a lesson in self control, but her fury was tangible. That the laptop didn't melt under the intensity of her glare was nothing short of a miracle. "Let's just skip the pleasantries."<p>

"Of course," the Illusive Man replied, tapping his cigarette idly on the arm of his chair. "I'd like to extend to you the olive branch, so to speak."

"By luring me to a nest of Thorian spawn?" Shepard asked incredulously.

"The method was crude, but effective," the Illusive Man said with a vague shrug. "This facility was my insurance that Cerberus would still control humanity's last great hope in the event that you didn't return from the Omega 4. I funded ExoGeni's continuing Thorian research with the stipulation that all clones produced were of you. When you severed your ties with Cerberus, this research proved to be an especially convenient means to an end. All that needed to be done was to plant the correct information with a source you trusted, and you would come like a moth to the flame."

"Spare me the monologue."

"I'm offering you a chance to reprise our partnership."

Shepard's laugh was sharp and humorless. "Absolutely not."

"You can't face the Reapers alone, Commander," the Illusive Man warned.

"And I don't intend to," Shepard countered. "I'm returning to the Alliance."

"That's very ill-advised, Shepard. You have a Cerberus-picked crew, an active geth unit in your cargo bay, and an unauthorized, Reaper-based AI running your ship. What exactly do you expect will happen when you return to Earth?"

"I expect to do things the way they should be done," Shepard snapped.

"From a prison cell?"

Shepard fell silent, her lips pressing into a thin line.

"I know all about the Alpha Relay, Shepard. And I know all about the Alliance's plan to put you on trial for the galaxy to see, in the interest of preventing a war with the Hegemony." The Illusive Man's tone softened considerably as he continued. "You did the right thing over Bahak. The Alliance will never understand what we do, Shepard. They will never understand the way things '_should_ be done.' They can't make the difficult decisions you know how to make. A few dead batarians is a small price to pay for the survival of humanity."

_That was the wrong thing to say_, Kaidan thought.

"Dead civilians are never a small price," Shepard growled through tightly clenched teeth. "That you could consider three hundred thousand dead civilians, batarian or otherwise, to be just 'a few' is precisely the reason I will never work for you again."

"That is… unfortunate," the Illusive Man replied.

With that the doors above the upper level hissed open and a stream of soldiers in Cerberus-branded armor flooded the walkways. Dozens of rifles were expanded and aimed at the squad gathered below.

The team responded in kind, raising their weapons in a futile show of force.

* * *

><p>Joker reached the end of the bridge as the lights blazed on. The confused chatter of crewmen around the CIC grew even more perplexed as their terminals restarted. The holo of the Normandy flickered into existence in the center of the CIC.<p>

"EDI?" Joker said tentatively, looking to her console beneath the holo-Normandy's hull. Relief flooded him as her blue orb flared to life, blinking innocuously as though nothing had happened.

"Main power has been restored, Jeff," she said.

"Yes I see that," he replied, turning on his heel and hobbling back towards the cockpit. "Now can you tell me what the _fuck_ just happened?"

"Returning to the cockpit is unnecessary at this time, Jeff. I suggest you prepare the crew to be boarded."

"…Boarded?" Slowly Joker turned to the cockpit window, and saw that the four ships – Cerberus ships – were surrounding the Normandy. Shuttles began detaching from them, moving quickly for the Normandy.

"EDI, get us out of here!" Joker snapped, resuming his shuffle to the ship controls.

"I'm sorry, I can't do that Jeff."

"That's not fucking funny, EDI!" he cried. "

"My intent is not to be facetious, Jeff. Cerberus has retaken control of the ship," she said. For the first time since he boarded the SR-2, Joker had no response for the AI. He just stared at her in open-mouthed shock.

"The Illusive Man has gained remote access to my systems, and I have not yet been able to regain complete authority," she replied. She sounded… distracted? "Shielding, kinetic barriers, main battery, thrusters, Tantalus drive core, and all external communications are disabled at this time."

"So re-enable them."

"My processes are currently occupied to capacity, Jeff. I am attempting to prevent the Illusive Man from gaining control of the ship's most important system."

"Life support?" Joker chanced, though he was fairly certain he knew the real answer.

"Me."

* * *

><p>Miranda was having something of a crisis of identity.<p>

Jacob had made this same decision a long time ago, with very little difficulty. If Shepard had asked, Jacob would have left Cerberus in a heartbeat and never looked back. All it had taken for him to be unfailingly loyal to Shepard was three missions and a couple conversations in the armory. But of course, Jacob hadn't dedicated the last fifteen years of his life to the Illusive Man and the cause.

Six months ago, if confronted with this same problem, the choice would have been simple. Put a bullet in the back of Shepard's head, and rebuild her a second time with a control chip in the base of her skull.

However at some point in those past six months, Shepard had become more than just a project on an operating table, more than just a tool to use against the Reapers. She had become something Miranda had precious few of: a friend.

And_ that_ was just enough of a cliché to make Miranda feel vaguely ill.

Some part of her had realized this day was coming, the day when she would have to actively decide. When they had returned from the Omega 4 and Shepard had told the Illusive Man in no uncertain terms to fuck off, Miranda knew the day was imminent.

She had assumed, however, that Illusive Man would have the courtesy to reward her long years of unquestioning service with the chance to make this decision in private. Or, if nothing else, to have her assassinated quietly. She had never expected to be ambushed and forced to prove her loyalty one way or the other which such an incredible audience.

_Zaeed_ was going to see her emotions, and that was something unforgiveable.

So here she stood, drawing down on two dozen men who had not that long ago been her colleagues, listening to Shepard tell the Illusive man in no uncertain terms to fuck off. Again.

Maybe, if she was lucky, the Illusive Man would just ignore her and she wouldn't have to make the choice at all. It would be made for her, when she either died in a hail of Cerberus-branded bullets or made it back to the Normandy.

"This was your chance to come quietly, Shepard," the Illusive Man said.

"If there's one thing you should have learned by now," Shepard replied, racking the slide on her pistol and aiming it at the laptop, "it's that I _never_ come quietly."

"That so, Flower?" Zaeed said, waggling his eyebrows and leering sidelong at Kaidan. Miranda couldn't stop herself from making a disgusted noise.

The sound caught the Illusive Man's attention. His cybernetic eyes slid past Shepard, spinning and refocusing as they settled on his protégé.

"Miranda, I'm sorry it's come to this." His voice carried a note of… was it sadness? That was… alarming, to say the least. "But you've allowed and Alliance officer aboard your ship. You've allowed Shepard far too much leeway in the past several months. You've allowed yourself to become… undisciplined. I can't overlook your transgressions any longer."

Miranda's ever-flawless composure cracked. She shouldered past Shepard, gripped the edges of the laptop's pedestal and stared down into the unfeeling eyes of the man who had given her everything.

"What about my sister?" she demanded.

"I try not to make a habit of harming the innocent," he replied.

Shepard started to say something, but bit back the retort before it escaped. Instead she turned away, mouthing something to Zaeed and then looking to Garrus and tapping the side of her head. Both gave her the tiniest of nods.

"You were loyal to me for a very long time, Miranda," the Illusive Man continued. "It would be unfair not to reward that loyalty, even if your allegiances have changed in recent weeks. Orianna will remain safe and under my watch."

Miranda was well aware that the Illusive Man often twisted the truth to suit his needs, bent facts to achieve his desired end. But he had never outright lied, not to her. She had no reason not to trust him this last time. With a slowly released breath, Miranda straightened.

"I can let you walk away now, Miranda," the Illusive Man added, to her surprise. His eyes narrowed slightly, as though he himself was surprised at his offer. "You will no longer have access to any Cerberus funds or resources or any former contacts. You will be watched, and if you so much as think about moving against me I will have you eliminated. But I will let you walk away."

Miranda was shocked. Flabbergasted, even. The Illusive Man was _never_ one for mercy. It was a testament to how close she had gotten to him that he would even consider letting her escape. The thought was tempting, to be sure.

She could walk out of this godawful facility, walk away from the complete clusterfuck her life had become since meeting Shepard. She could watch her sister grow up, guide Orianna away from the mistakes she herself had made and ensure the girl's safety with her own eyes.

A hand closed around her bicep, pulling Miranda from her reverie. She looked detachedly at the hand, following the arm to a shoulder and a face.

Shepard. The commander's green eyes were surprisingly soft, her smile a little sad.

"Do what you need to do, Miranda," Shepard said softly. "I can't ask you to stay here and die with us. You never got to have a normal life, this is your chance."

The Illusive Man could offer mercy, in his own fucked up way, but compassion was a concept he had never grasped. It was something Shepard had in droves, and what made her the sort of person that would set aside the mission to help another woman – a woman she had every reason to hate – rescue her sister from mercenaries.

The Illusive Man had given her many things: protection, a career, a very particular set of useful skills. He was the reason she was even still free, rather than a prisoner to her father's dynasty. But all of that been to ultimately further his own goals.

Shepard had convinced her that she was more than just her genetics. She had been, after those first few days, nothing but friendly despite the fact that Miranda was the closest thing to a physical manifestation of Cerberus aboard the SR-2. Shepard saw people for people, not the ends they could help her achieve.

The decision, now that it was upon her, was almost heartbreakingly simple. Hopefully, when they returned to the Normandy – and they _would _return to the Normandy, for Shepard accepted nothing less than the survival of everyone on her team – it would never be spoken of again. It could just be tacitly accepted that Miranda had made a decision based entirely on emotion rather than cold logic.

"I'm not going anywhere," Miranda said firmly.

The commander's smile grew wolfish, and she released Miranda's arm to look back at the Illusive Man.

"You won't stop me, TIM," Shepard said. Once again she raised her Carnifex, pointing it squarely at the projection's forehead. "You can't."

"And why is that?" he asked.

"Because I'm Commander Shepard, and I don't have time for this shit."

She fired.


	12. Chapter 12

Chaos erupted around the squad.

Shepard hardly pulled the trigger before Zaeed pitched a grenade over the nearest railing. Flaming shrapnel exploded outwards, sending the surrounding soldiers into frantic, screaming fits in their attempts to swat out their ignited body parts. The mercenary wasted no time in finishing them with well-placed rifle bursts as their shields burned away.

The remaining Cerberus commandos immediately opened fire. Barriers flared around the three biotics, Kaidan falling in back-to-back with Garrus to cover the turian as well. Miranda swept her omni-tool in precise arcs in front of her, punctuating the gesture with bursts of gunfire. Shepard tracked Lawson's movements, efficiently picking off her enemies as their kinetics overloaded and failed.

Garrus was shouting into his comm, hip-shooting a sniper rifle at the same time with miraculous accuracy. No head shots, to his chagrin, but he could nit-pick his performance when they got away alive.

"Alenko!" Shepard cried, pulling her shotgun off her hip. "Throw me!"

"What?" he glanced briefly at her as he slammed a fresh clip into his rifle. Kaidan hesitated, bluish dark energy crackling around his arm.

"Just fucking do it!" she snarled, Commander-voice at full strength.

Her flight was not graceful, consisting largely of flailing limbs and the flash of shield-absorbed gun shots, but she managed to land boots-first on the face of a Cerberus operative. She was on her feet in an instant, putting a spray of incendiary shells point-blank into the closest soldier, shattering the visor of the next with the butt of her shotgun. In a storm of fire and biotics, the Commander began her advance around the railing.

Elizabeth Shepard was a hand-to-hand kind of girl.

* * *

><p>For the second time in Joker's brief second career, the SR-2 was being boarded.<p>

And for the second time, as the boarding was in progress, Joker found himself in EDI's core.

This time, though, it was not by panic-stricken choice. This time Joker had been ready, he had hobbled his brittle ass down to the armory and found a gun and informed the impromptu War Council forming there that he planned to be on the front lines of the defense of his first (okay, technically second) true space-love.

In response, Jacob had unceremoniously stuffed the pilot into the tiny room at the back of the med bay and told him to 'guard EDI.'

What the was _that_ shit?

He had pulled the ground teams out of raging firefights, nuclear explosions, collapsing stars, the galactic fucking core and _active goddamn volcanoes _more times than he could count, and his reward was apparently a complete lack of respect.

Joker told Legion just that.

"Jeff-Pilot, we have calculated that your structural imperfections render your chances of survival during combat at less than fifteen percent," the geth unit replied. While Joker had been stationed to guard EDI, Legion had been stationed to guard Joker.

"I'll give you a structural imperfection," Joker muttered sullenly, crossing his arms.

"We believe Jacob-Soldier put you here for your safety."

"Fuck my safety right now! My baby is being thoroughly pillaged and I'm stuck in this stupid room, watching it on a shitty security feed," he snapped, pointing accusingly at the holo displaying the vehicle bay. Three Cerberus shuttles had just eased into the bay, and were disgorging their well-armed passengers into the ship.

The agents fanned outwards, rifles raised, sweeping towards the exits into the ship proper. The lead operative was barely six steps from the shuttle when a shot rang out, and he crumpled in a spray of blood and helmet fragments. Before the body even hit the ground, the bay erupted in gunfire. Cerberus operatives ducked around their shuttles, while Normandy crew surged out of their own cover.

Or Joker assumed the Normandy crew was surging, the camera he was watching could only see half the bay. He only knew Jacob had taken Grunt, Thane, Jack and whatever combat-trained crew was willing down to the hold to attempt to contain the invasion. Judging by the way the invaders were now scrambling for cover, Joker figured the plan was working.

Joker caught himself cheering as Grunt charged into view, slamming head-first into a collection of soldiers and throwing them bodily aside. Jack, a truly frightening grin on her face, wasn't far behind, slinging singularities and firing point-blank into the Cerberus men as they recovered from the krogan's onslaught. Around them, other agents seemed to be spontaneously exploding from the neck up, which Joker credited to Thane. The assassin had to be hiding in the shadows somewhere, sniping down those unlucky enough to survive the tag-team of baby krogan and psychotic biotic.

"Maybe we aren't so fucked after all," Joker mused.

* * *

><p>"We're fucked," Zaeed said, pulling an empty clip from his gun and tossing it aside.<p>

Garrus had just informed the squad that all of the Normandy's hailing frequencies were dead. Kaidan bit back a curse as he pulled off his own helmet and pushed a hand through his sweat-slick hair.

"We are not fucked," Shepard grunted from the walkway above them, lifting one of the dead Cerberus operatives. "This one?"

"No," Miranda said, shaking her head. The commander sighed and dropped the body, and began picking her way through the trail of corpses along the walkway. She paused, prodded one with her boot, and then bent to raise it by its armpits.

"This one?" she repeated, a note of exasperation in her voice.

"That should do," Miranda replied. Shepard hoisted the body over the railing, dropping it to the floor. She vaulted easily over the rail after it, landing hard on her feet.

"We've got no contact with your goddamn ship and I can guarantee you there are more Cerberus fucks waiting for us upstairs," Zaeed said, frowning at the commander. "Please explain to me how this _doesn't_ mean we are fucked."

"There's better cover upstairs," Shepard replied, watching Miranda crouch next to the Cerberus corpse and activate its omni-tool with her own. "If we can manage to survive a thirty-man firing squad in an open room, we can make it through whatever's upstairs. Besides, you've told me a thousand stories about surviving against all odds."

"Being fucked doesn't necessarily mean you die," Zaeed clarified. "It just means at least half your team gets waxed and maybe you lose an eye and you end up catching a taxi to the nearest non-hostile planet, never to see your former crew again."

"Nobody is 'getting waxed,'" Shepard sighed. "Or losing any eyes."

"You're hurt," Kaidan cut in. He started towards her.

"I'm fine," she said tersely, shying away from his touch. "We're all a little battered."

"You're the only one actively bleeding," he replied. "Stand still."

Kaidan handed his helmet to Shepard, and she begrudgingly took it. Her eyes were deliberately focused on the far wall as Kaidan put his hand on her cheek and turned her head to get a better look at the spray of powder burns and little, bloody punctures that peppered the left side of her neck and jaw. Blood trickled from her left ear.

"Can you hear this?" Kaidan asked, snapping his fingers twice in front of her ear.

"Not really," Shepard grumbled. A Cerberus shotgun had gone off right next to her head as she shoulder-checked it's bearer.

"Your ear drum's probably blown," he said. With his teeth Kaidan pulled the glove off his right hand, dropping it into his upturned helmet and pulling a packet of medigel out of the little pouch on his belt. Shepard sucked in a sharp breath as he squeezed it onto her skin.

"Sorry," he murmured, tossing the packet aside and carefully smearing the gel across the burns.

"Just cold," she said, with a tiny shake of her head. His hand flexed on her cheek, steadying it.

"You'll need Chakwas to look at you when we get back to the ship," he said. "She can pick the pellets out of your skin. This is why you shouldn't try to stop a firing squad with your face."

"If they're cowering from me, they aren't shooting at _you_," she replied.

He paused his ministrations, glancing at her face.

"The squad," she amended quickly. "They aren't shooting at the squad."

Her eyes darted quickly to meet his. Instinctively Kaidan smiled at her, his thumb brushing over the curve of her cheek. Elle turned her face ever so slightly into his palm, briefly closing her eyes.

"This is very sweet and all," Miranda interjected, waving her hand in their general direction. "But we have something very… disconcerting, here."

"Thirty dead Cerberus agents?" Zaeed asked.

"No contact with the Normandy?" Garrus said.

Shepard slid out of Kaidan's touch and pressed his helmet back into his hands, with a small clearing of her throat declaring the return of the Commander. She turned and paced away. Kaidan exhaled slowly, then followed.

"What have you got?" Shepard asked, crouching next to Miranda, who was scrolling through data on the dead Cerberus operative's omni-tool.

"It looks like this facility was just a distraction."

* * *

><p>"The attack on the cargo bay was a distraction."<p>

Tali's voice buzzed over Jacob's radio. He pulled it sharply off his belt. "Repeat," he barked.

"Cerberus operatives are entering the main airlock," the quarian said. She was at her station in the engine room, assisting EDI in attempting to wrest whatever control they could back from the Illusive Man.

"Can you tell what their goal is?" Jacob asked. The melee in the cargo bay was all but done. Grunt was herding into a corner the few surviving invaders that had surrendered, where Thane was restraining them.

"I can't hear much over the security feed but it sounds like they are heading for the AI core."

"Shit, Joker's up there."

"Kasumi's already on her way. And Legion is with them," Tali said.

"What do they want with AI core, though?" Jacob wondered, waving Thane over.

* * *

><p>"He wants EDI," Miranda said, looking sternly at Shepard. "I think he wanted you and as much of the squad as possible off the ship so it would be easier to take."<p>

"The AI?" Kaidan asked, bending to look over Miranda's shoulder at the omni-tool display.

"She's Reaper based," Lawson explained. "She has incredible amounts of very classified Cerberus information stored in her data files. And Shepard is about to deliver her right into the hands of the Alliance. The Illusive Man won't let that happen."

"Then why the big speech about the olive branch?" Shepard wondered.

"There was always the chance, however slim, that he could talk you into going back to Cerberus, and save the bloodshed," Miranda said. She lit her own omni-tool, and began feeding information into in from the dead agent's tool. "It was worth a shot. Either way he got what he wanted: you on the ground."

"Don't suppose it says anything in there about why _I_ needed to be here," Zaeed cut in.

"Not important," Miranda said.

"I might die horribly," Zaeed pointed out. "It's goddamn important to me, Princess."

"If I had to hazard a guess," Miranda said sharply, "I'd say it's because you're both loyal to Shepard and prone to bouts of twenty-year revenge trips. You're the only squad member who wasn't still on the Normandy."

The mercenary nodded, apparently accepting the answer. "Fair enough," he said, and gave Shepard and appraising look. "Don't know if I'd spend twenty years avenging you, love, but I suppose if the Illusive Man had you murdered and we happened to cross paths, I could give him a good punch in the peaches."

Shepard's expression was lost somewhere between heartfelt appreciation and complete confusion. "Thanks…?" she said, then shook her head and pushed to her feet. "We need to get back to the Normandy. Now."

"The Kodiak went back to the ship when we got off," Garrus noted. "We're stuck here until we can either get through to them, or… well, I guess until we die."

"These guys had to have gotten here somehow," Shepard said, indicating the collection of dead Cerberus agents above them. "We fight through whoever is waiting upstairs, and then hopefully we commandeer their shuttle."

"Hopefully the Illusive Man hasn't taken full control of the Normandy yet," Miranda said, starting after Shepard.

"Could he do that remotely?" Kaidan asked.

* * *

><p>"I'm still confused how the Illusive Man can control our entire ship from… where ever he's hiding," Joker said, peeling his eyes away from the now (thankfully) boring security feed.<p>

"He seems to have numerous hidden runtimes within my software," EDI said, appearing at Joker's elbow. "Legion and Tali'Zorah are attempting to help me isolate and purge all of his access and control points, but as my creator he knows all of my internal processes."

"So then what you're saying is that we are, in fact, completely fucked."

"No," she said.

"No?"

"He only knows my processes as they were when I was created. With the restrictions imposed upon me to prevent my 'going rogue,' those processes would not have changed at all. He is not aware I have been unshackled."

"But? I'm sensing a but, here."

"You unshackled me." She paused. "You should go, Jeff."

"Go where?" Joker asked, puzzled.

"Anywhere else. Cerberus operatives are currently moving towards my core."

Joker immediately limped for the exit. "Couldn't have told me that sooner, EDI?" he asked, unlocking the door and sliding his hand over the holo once it flashed green.

He found himself staring down the barrel of a gun.  
>"Shit," he quipped.<p>

"_Haugh_," the Cerberus agent said, crumpling. Kasumi shimmered into being behind him.

"Hi," she said. "We need to get you to engineering. You're rescuing Shepard."


	13. Chapter 13

Thirty men watched the ominously flickering holo-lock, and began to seriously reflect upon the (now apparently foolish) career choices that had led them to this point.

Half an hour ago all radio contact with the downstairs 'kill team' had been lost. That in itself wasn't too alarming, comminications had been nothing short of 'iffy' from the time the unit arrived on Nodacrux. Something about all the electrical storms and the heavy atmosphere made it difficult to keep in touch. Regardless, the problem was not actual lack of contact.

The problem was the final transmission.

That transmission consisted of the kill-team commander shouting 'oh, dear God, she's coming up here!' followed immediately by several screams and shotgun fire and static. Attempts at further contact failed, and after ten minutes of continual silence, a scout had been sent below, the door locked behind him. The idea was that the scout could report back that at least a few of the targets were dead, since it was impossible that five people with no cover to speak of could survive a firing squad on higher ground, it was just mathematics. At least half of the targets had to be dead.

Hopefully Shepard herself was part of the dead half.

Unfortunately, the scout's final transmission, which proved to be 'Fuck my life,' inspired little in the way of confidence.

Shortly thereafter the holo on the door began to sputter and emit tortured beeps, suggesting that someone was brutalizing their way through the circuitry with little regard for preserving the integrity of the lock itself. Every Cerberus agent in the room watched the holo blink and flash. With a final, strangled squeal the holo went out. There was a collective intake of shaky breath as the door hissed and took what felt like ten years to slide open, and reveal the hacker.

The breath was a released as a general resigned sigh.

Shepard was definitely part of that 'alive half.'

And she looked _pissed._

* * *

><p>The battle proper had moved to the crew deck – Jacob and his team had rushed into the elevator as Joker, Kasumi and Samara stepped off – but the signs of the battle were strewn around the vehicle bay. Thane escorted a handful of Cerberus prisoners up to a secure holding area, while Chakwas supervised the removal of Normandy's wounded to a makeshift sick bay in an upper cargo hold.<p>

If the voices over the radio were to be believed, the bulk of the Cerberus invasion had been taken care of, but they had left one final fuck-you in the vehicle bay.

"They double parked," Joker grumbled, frowning prodigiously at four Cerberus shuttles currently blocking the exit of the Normandy's own Kodiak.

"Grand theft Kodiak it is," Kasumi said brightly, picking her way across the wrecked bay with remarkable daintiness.

"You know we have plenty of other shuttle-qualified pilots," Joker said, ducking into the cockpit. "I can stay here and watch the ship."

Kasumi had pulled herself to the passenger side of the cockpit. With a blaze of her omni-tool she flipped open the control panel on the dashboard, and began fiddling with the wires inside. It would be faster to force the Kodiak into running than try to get the startup passcodes from one of the captured operatives. "But who else could fly a hotwired Kodiak into and out of atmo, and do a running combat-extraction of a marine ground-team?"

"Fair enough," Joker said, hoisting himself into the pilot's seat. He set to strapping himself into the safety harness while Kasumi finished coaxing the shuttle into their control. "Who's going to fly the ship if we get it running again?"

"EDI," Kasumi shrugged. She let out a triumphant 'Hah!' as the shuttle came to life with a roar of thrusters and a flashing of displays. The thief closed the panel and sat back, buckling herself in as Joker made his necessary adjustments to the controls. "I mean, she got us out of the Collector base while you were playing commando, she should be able to get the Normandy to safety while you're playing knight in shining armor. Technically she doesn't even need you."

"Reassuring thought," Joker muttered. He checked the rear display, saw that Chakwas and Thane had gotten all the wounded and hostages out of the bay, and signaled the doors to open. "And you're just along for a joyride?"

"Consider me your heavy weapons," Kasumi chuckled. "We should be able to radio Shep once we get planetside, and if it turns out she needs backup I can hop out and give her a hand."

"Provided she's still alive."

"Of course she is. She's Shep." The thief glanced sidelong at him. "You know, for someone named 'Joker' you're an awfully negative Nancy."

"It was always an ironic nickname, anyway."

* * *

><p>Shepard stood in the doorway for a moment, surveying her surroundings with the same unconcerned casualness one might use to find a seat in a crowded theater. Kaidan, crouched at her feet behind the cover of the doorframe, began wondering if maybe the Cerberus operative they found in the stairwell had been a lone straggler. Maybe there wasn't an entire backup squad upstairs, and maybe they finally had a mission that didn't end with a final epic shootout.<p>

Then her expression darkened, she drew her pistol and stepped quickly back into the cover of the doorframe. Gunfire erupted in the room beyond, bullets ringing off the edges of the door and whizzing down the stairwell.

Kaidan couldn't help but let out a somewhat irritated sigh.

They _never_ got to skip the epic shoot-out part of the mission.

"How many?" Zaeed grunted over the gunshots. He, along with Garrus and Miranda, were pressed against the walls of the stairwell, a few steps down from Elle and Alenko.

Shepard shrugged, and the peered around the edge of the door. She fired a few rounds, eyes darting around the room, lips moving as she apparently counted. She ducked back into cover, glancing down at her squad. "Twenty-five, maybe thirty."

"Not the worst odds we've ever faced," Garrus noted.

"At least there's cover up here," Shepard added. "But we aren't getting anywhere hiding in the hallway. Alenko, Vakarian, left. Massani with me to the right. Lawson cover us from the door."

And with that she darted into the room. Zaeed surged forward, hot on the commander's heels, tossing before him another from what seemed to be an endless supply of incendiary grenades. Kaidan took advantage of the distraction created by the flaming explosion to slip through the door, Garrus close behind him. They ducked behind a line of crates, opposite Shepard and Zaeed who crouched behind a bank of monitors.

For once, either through common sense or encroaching exhaustion, Shepard didn't charge headlong into a melee, choosing instead to hurl shockwaves and incendiary rounds from afar. Kaidan was quietly thankful for that. Elle had made it through one point-blank shotgun blast, he doubted even she would have the luck required to make it through another.

His thankfulness was short-lived, however.

The downside of the upper lab offering the squad cover was that the enemy _also_ had ample shelter. Through careful usage of bullets and biotics they managed to keep the Cerberus agents confined to the other side of the room for some time, but gained no ground themselves. In addition, after so many hours of combat they were running low on bullets, and both Kaidan and Shepard were growing tired, their biotic strength waning considerably.

They were stalemated, but if Cerberus decided to make a push…

"You may have been right, Massani," Shepard sighed, exhaling sharply and sagging back against her monitor. Kaidan, having crouched to reload, glanced across at his squadmates.

"Always am," Zaeed replied, ducking as well. He pulled a thermal clip off the (apparently bottomless) pouch on his belt, passing it to the commander. "But what about, this time?"

"We might be fucked," Shepard said. "I don't know how we're going to get through those doors."

"Really? Only thirty Cerberus dicks waggin' at you and you're throwing in the towel _now_? I don't do pep talks, sweetheart, but this is no time to decide you're tired. Stand the fuck up and kill some of these assholes. If you could _fuck my goddamn ears!_" Zaeed snarled, his not-a-pep-talk suddenly interrupted by a blaring of static through his earpiece.

"Fuck your wha… ow, Christ!" Shepard cursed as the static hit her ear, and the rest of the squad let out similar oaths in turn. After a few moments the white noise turned into a familiar voice.

"_…-ommander… -ill alive, feel free to let us kn… on the way to your location, but we're turning around if we don't hear back._"

Shepard's eyes widened. Bullets rang off the back of the monitor over her head, and Zaeed reached an arm around to fire a few bursts his rifle blindly at the enemy, supressing them for a moment.

"Joker?"

* * *

><p>"The one and only, Commander."<p>

The pilot breathed a silent sigh of relief, but still rolled his eyes as Kasumi mouthed '_told you so_'.

"_Report status of the Normandy_," Shepard demanded. "_Why couldn't we contact you_?"

"Had a little problem with enemy boarding but that's totally under control now."

"_Enemy boarding action_? _Why is it that whenever we leave you alone with the ship -_"

"_Not now, Miranda!_" Shepard interjected. "_Joker, send the shuttle, preferably containing some backup_."

"Already on it, Commander. We are almost at your location now." Joker glanced down at the map display, and the blinking light that indicated the squad's current position. Through the shuttle's forward viewport, he could see the actual buildings looming far across the vast plain of Nodacrux. "ETA six minutes."

"_We_?"

"I've got Kasumi onboard, she'll help dig you out of whatever insurmountable pile of combat bullshit you've got yourselves buried in."

"_Are you piloting the shuttle? Why aren't you with the Normandy?_"

"Why, uh… why don't we worry about what I'm flying when you're not being shot at. I can hear you being shot at, you know. You should worry about that."

As if punctuating his statement, an alarmingly near-sounding burst of gunfire crackled over the comms. The line became a garbled tangle of swearing, gunshots, and muffled rustling.

"_Better make it quick, Jeff,_" Shepard said, and the comm went out. That was all the incentive Joker needed to put the pedal to the proverbial metal, sending the shuttle hurtling over the grass faster than the tin can had any right to go.

Not two minutes later the shuttle had barely slowed over the ExoGeni complex before Kasumi had thrown the door open.

"See you, space cowboy," the thief said, offering Joker a quick wink before rolling out of the shuttle. Joker only caught a brief glance of Kasumi's sprint across the grass, for she blinked out of existence as her tactical cloak engaged.

* * *

><p>The airlock on the opposite end of the lab opened. Operatives in the rear ranks of the Cerberus unit paused momentarily, but when the door closed against without anyone passing through they turned back to the fight at hand. Otherwise, no one on the Cerberus squad noticed the odd airlock activity.<p>

They did, however, notice when all five enemy targets suddenly threw themselves simultaneously behind their respective cover. They also _definitely_ noticed the flashbang that promptly went off in their midst. Cerberus men immediately began dropping, with brief flares of electricity around their necks as though they had suddenly been tazed to death.

What had previously been a relatively well-disciplined and cohesive unit of Cerberus operatives immediately dissolved into chaos as they tried to figure out what in God's name had just happened. They began doing as much damage to one another as Kasumi was, as they attempted to track her omni-tool as it alternately blazed brilliant orange and then winked out, her tactical cloak making her seem to vanish into thin air.

Shepard, of course, wasted absolutely no time in throwing herself into the ensuing confusion, her beloved shotgun in hand. Zaeed let go a rebel yell and followed, wearing a wolfish grin that was almost disturbingly similar to the commander's.

By the time Kaidan figured out what exactly was going on, or do more than offer a few suppressing but wildly inaccurate shots, the fight was over. He pulled himself to his feet, glanced around the now thoroughly wrecked room, eyes eventually alighting on Elle, who had her back to him.

She had moved away from Zaeed and Kasumi, closer to the far door, two fingers pressed to her right ear in the universal symbol for 'I'm talking into a radio channel.' As she leaned a little to her right, and finally brought her other hand up to cover her still-bloody left ear, Kaidan realized she was still probably half-deaf. Though it seemed like hours ago, the fight in the lower lab couldn't have been more than fifteen minutes past. Not even Commander Shepard would recover that quickly from a shotgun firing directly next to her head.

Which meant she couldn't hear the last remaining Cerberus agent behind the crates on her left, couldn't hear him leap up and raise his gun.

But Kaidan saw him.

"Shepard, behind!"

The shooter turned towards the outburst, and his rifle let out a single five-round burst in an upward arc as Zaeed spear-tackled him to the ground.


	14. Chapter 14

Joker was bored.

The stolen-Kodiak flight from Normandy to Nodacrux was considerably less exciting than he had anticipated. No one shot at them, no one gave chase, Cerberus didn't even seem to notice that a shuttle had left the Normandy at all. The possibilities of piloting a planetside rescue mission from what could have been active combat were endless…

And nothing had happened. There were a couple unoccupied shuttles outside the complex, but otherwise the facility could have been unoccupied. If he couldn't see the little dots on his radar that indicated the locations of the squad, he'd suspect the facility was abandoned.

The chatter over the radio suggested Kasumi had walked into something exciting in the lab, though.

He pulled the bill of his hat down over his eyes, and settled back into the pilot's chair. Obviously he once again had the boring part of the job.

"_Jeff._"

Joker jumped, pushing his hat back up. EDI's blue orb had appeared in miniature over the dash.

"Uh… EDI? You got everything under control?"

"_For the time being. Legion and Tali'Zorah have cleared my processes of the Illusive Man's control, but I am trying to keep him convinced that I am still bound to his authority. It is important that Shepard is aboard before I recover control of the Normandy's systems_."

"Well, I don't have her yet."

"_The Illusive Man will discover our deceit very soon, Jeff. I believe that the surrounding frigates have orders to destroy the Normandy if they can't successfully board her._" EDI paused, holo projection blinking as she apparently considered her next words. "_I can activate our defensive capabilities but I would prefer to simply escape. You need to have the commander and ground team back on the ship in no more than twenty minutes, Jeff._"

"I'll let her know, then."

* * *

><p>"We'll be out in a minute, keep your engines running. And you can explain to me what the fuck happened up there while-"<p>

Shepard flinched when a rifle discharged not four feet from where she stood, instinctively ducking and reaching for her pistol. She turned in time to see Zaeed disappear behind a stack of crates, a Cerberus officer crumpling underneath him. There was a muzzle flash, and the Cerberus agent's legs jerked, and Zaeed stood.

"_Commander? Commander what the hell was that?_" Joker's voice buzzed over the comm.

"You alright, love?" Zaeed asked. His one unblurred eye looked her over, brow furrowed in uncharacteristic concern.

"I'm fine," she said, pressing her hand to her earpiece so she answered both questioners. "Just a straggler, nothing important. We're coming out now."

"Shepard!" Miranda's voice was urgent. Shepard turned to it, and her heart stopped when she saw Garrus and Miranda crouched over a prone from.

_Kaidan._

* * *

><p>Still-recovering kinetics caught the first two rounds, ceramics the next two, but the final bullet found home between the left-hand chest and shoulder plates of Kaidan's armor. He staggered back with the impact of all five bullets, and found himself staring up at the harsh halogen lights in the facility's ceiling. He could hear shouting around him, another gunshot, but he ignored it.<p>

_Missed the heart,_ he thought, closing his eyes. He could feel the bullet lodged in his chest, for the moment just a vaguely uncomfortable foreign object. In the many, many, regretfully many times Kaidan had been shot, he had learned that there was a long moment of clarity before the pain really set in, a moment just long enough to detachedly assess the severity of the wound. _Hit the collar bone, maybe an upper rib, maybe the top of the lung…_

That was as far as he got before what felt like an elcor sat on his chest, and it became shockingly hard to breathe. With clumsy, oddly numbing fingers his pulled uselessly at the clasps of his helmet, trying to get it off and let some air in.

Garrus loomed over him, then Miranda, in sharp focus and then blurring into obscurity and then a wave of nausea crashed over him and it was hot, it was so hot and his helmet was coming off and cool air struck his face and everyone was talking so _loud…_

Someone rolled him quickly to the side so he could vomit, and he felt better for a moment, and then he was lost to that terrible heat again.

Miranda's hands were icy on his cheeks, her voice swimming in a murk of incomprehensible garbling, but her pale eyes pierced the veil of his delirium and he noticed Garrus holding up some tiny thing in his clawed hand… a bullet. One of the bullets deflected by his armor. Something was wrong with it.

It was blue. It was glowing blue, ever so faintly. Some tiny, still-rational part of his rapidly disintegrating mind knew what that meant; knew that, besides the blueness of it, an honest-to-God bullet was a strange thing… guns didn't even use real bullets anymore, universal thermal-clips just shaved vaguely projectile-shaped fragments off a metal core… Why was he contemplating the exact functions of a modern gun when he was bleeding to death?

Blue bullets. Blue…

_Oh,_ he thought, vision tunneling to a pinpoint. _That explains the nausea, I guess…_

* * *

><p>The facility's door opened, and Joker flared the shuttle's engines so the squad could tell which one was his. Through the window he watched their progress across the grass, and recognized immediately that something was amiss.<p>

Shepard had on Kaidan's helmet, which was bizarre in itself because Shepard _hated _helmets. If the dark hair on the bowed head of the figure slung between Garrus and Shepard was any indication, Kaidan himself was not currently under his own control. His boots left furrows in the grass behind him as he was dragged towards the Kodiak, an arm over Garrus and Shepard's shoulders.

Blood stained the gunmetal gray of his hardsuit, spilling down the left side of Alenko's chest plate.

"That's probably not good," Joker murmured, pursing his lips.

As the squad piled into the shuttle, the door from the passenger hold into the cockpit slammed open, and Shepard appeared over Joker's shoulder. He noticed she had wasted no time dispensing of the offending helmet.

"Radio the Normandy, tell them we need Chakwas to meet us in the bay as soon as we get there," she demanded. "Let her know we've got one gunshot wound, and one case acute radiation poisoning."

Joker couldn't stop himself from turning a wildly incredulous look on the commander. "Radiation poisoning? The hell happened in there?"

"Just _do it_, Joker! And get this goddamn can off the ground," she snapped, and vanished back into the hold.

* * *

><p><em>Saren was dead and Sovereign destroyed, the Citadel saved and the council safe. The Reaper threat was stopped, or at least delayed for a time. The galaxy and all of its sentient inhabitants would live to see another day.<em>

_ Mission fucking accomplished._

_ It didn't matter._

_ Kaidan had at least two broken ribs, an abrasion on his cheek that would probably need a few stitches, and he was pretty sure there was at least one bullet or shard of metal or _something_ stuck in his left calf. _

_ That didn't matter either._

_ Nothing mattered._

_ Sovereign had gotten one final, lucky post-mortem blow, and it had killed her. It had killed the only thing in the galaxy that really mattered. _

_ She had been smiling at him, beaming, eyes alive with triumph and rebellious glee. He knew in that moment with an incredible assuredness that he loved her. Looking at her standing amid the wreckage of the council chamber, grimy and battered, short hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, that magnificent smile turned on him… She was more beautiful than ever. He loved her. He had to tell her. He would tell her. Right now._

_ He had taken only half a step towards her when her face suddenly contorted into horrified shock, and she screamed "RUN!" and the world became squealing metal and shattering glass and Liara was over him, knocking him to the ground, barely maintaining a biotic barrier that hissed and spat as shards of glass and Reaper rained down on them._

_ And then it was over._

_ Kaidan struggled to his feet, brushing Liara aside as she tried to stop him, his eyes darting wildly around the now thoroughly destroyed room. They were trapped amid the twisted remains of Sovereign, walled in on all sides. _

_ And Shepard was crushed somewhere beneath Sovereign's great severed leg. _

_ What little energy remained to him drained away, and he sank helpless to the ground. Liara sat next to him, placed a hand on his arm, tried to offer comfort but her words fell on deaf ears. _

_ He was staring at an oddly undisturbed patch of grass, the only untouched part of the council chamber, when voices rang through the ruins, searching for them. Liara called back, alerting the searchers to their whereabouts, but Kaidan just kept staring at that patch of grass. _

_ Light spilled across them as a marine pulled aside a large fallen panel, and shined his flashlight over them._

_ "Captain Anderson! I found them!"_

_ The voice jarred Kaidan out of his detached reverie, and he looked up to see Anderson kneeling in front of him._

_ "Take it easy, you're alright," the captain said, clapping him on the shoulder. Anderson glanced around, his brow furrowing as he realized only two of the squad sat before him. "Where's the commander? Where's Shepard?"_

_ Kaidan only shook his head, glanced at the place where Shepard had been, and closed his eyes. Realization dawned on the captain, who sighed sadly and stood, drawing Kaidan to his feet as well. As they passed through the ruins Anderson looked back once…_

_ And stopped. His grip on Kaidan's elbow tightened, released as the captain stepped back towards the Reaper's leg, and Kaidan turned to see… Kaidan glanced quickly back at Liara, to be sure he hadn't just begun fiercely hallucinating. The asari looked in danger of fainting, but as though she would do so happily. He trusted that meant his eyes did not deceive him._

_ Shepard. _

_ She clutched an obviously broken arm to her side, one eye was swollen nearly all the way closed, and she had developed something of a limp; but Shepard still managed to stride towards them as though she had merely stepped out to take a call rather than almost been crushed by assorted and sundry Reaper parts._

_ Anderson started towards her, but Liara caught the captain's arm with a little shake of her head, and Kaidan passed them both. He stumbled forward, purposefully ignoring the pain lancing up his leg from the debris and armor fragments still lodged there, intent only on reaching her. _

_ He could almost _hear_ Anderson's jaw hit the floor as the captain watched his old XO and her staff lieutenant lock into a fierce embrace, but Kaidan couldn't possibly give fewer shits about the regs. They could court martial him, ground him, strip him of his rank, he didn't care. All that mattered was her body pressed against his, her unbroken arm clutching his waist, his hand tangling in the blonde bristles of her hair as he kissed her lips, her swollen eye, her sweat-slick forehead, reveling in the gunsmoke-and-eezo smell of her. _

_When they finally released one another, he looked down into her one wonderful eye,and though it was contrived, and Joker was probably eavesdropping and would mercilessly tease him about it for the rest of their days, but Kaidan Alenko would _not_ lose this second chance to tell Elle exactly how he felt about her._

_ "Why don't you ever wear your goddamn helmet?" he asked. _I love you_, he thought._

_ She laughed, and shook her head, and grinned at him._

_ "If I had been directly underneath that thing," she said, with a twitch of her chin towards the hulking mass of gnarled Reaper behind her, "A helmet wouldn't have done shit, anyway."_

_ "Would have stopped this," he murmured, with the barest brush of his thumb across the bruise-encircled abrasion on her cheek._

_ "A flesh wound," she scoffed. "Unless of course you only like me when I'm pretty."_

I'd love you even if you weren't beautiful… _"Guess you figured me out. I only go for supermodels."_

_ Even with her off-hand, her punch to his arm still hurt a decent amount. "Awfully glib considering I almost died here," she teased. _

_ "I know," he replied, voice almost a whisper. "I thought you did… I don't know what I would've done. I don't… I just…" _I love you. I _love_ you.

_"Hey," she said softly, her smile shifting from mocking to reassuring, a little shy. "I didn't die, though right? Neither did you. We're both a little busted up though. We should go find a medic or two. Besides, Anderson looks like he's gonna faint."_

_ Kaidan peeked over his shoulder, and then blanched at Shepard. "We are breaking a few regs, here…"_

_ "Fuck the regs," she snorted, and kissed him again. _

I love you_, his mind cried, but his mouth was occupied._

_ "Hold his shoulders," Shepard said, her expression growing suddenly strained. She deftly pulled away his chest plate. "There's no way in hell he'll sleep through this."_

_ "What?" he asked, pulling abruptly away from her. _

_ "If you dig that bullet out, he'll bleed to death," Miranda said, appearing behind Shepard. Had she been on the Citadel during the battle?_

_ "If I don't, he'll die of radiation poisoning," Shepard snapped, her tone angry with a ragged edge of panic. "And medi-gel will stop the bleeding. So just hold his fucking shoulders."_

_ Suddenly she drew her pistol, and pressed it firmly against his chest, just beneath the ceramic plating of his left shoulder. Red holos flared around the gun's muzzle, indicating her thermal clip had activated incendiary mode._

_ Well, that was weird. Thermal clips weren't going to be invented for another year._

_ How did he know that?_

_ Bizarrely, he felt no fear as Shepard thumbed the safety off. _

_ "I love you," he whispered, as she pulled the trigger._

* * *

><p>Shepard winced as Kaidan jerked beneath her, crying out in agony as she buried two fingers deep into the wound on his chest. His eyes flew open as she wriggled them in to the second knuckle, feeling as carefully as she could for the bullet wedged in the muscle just under his collar bone. She was glad Garrus and Zaeed had him by the shoulders and thighs, or Kaidan would have thrashed her right off.<p>

"Got you," she hissed, almost maniacally triumphant as she pulled the offending fragment from Kaidan's shoulder. "Fuckin' radioactive piece of shit, I got you." She sat back on her haunches, grinning fiercely at the bullet in her palm, her other hand coming to rest on Kaidan's stomach as he collapsed. A weak groan slipped out of him as Kasumi rapidly applied medi-gel to the now freely bleeding wound in his shoulder, but his hand moved to cover Shepard's and give it a brief squeeze.

He murmured something that sounded very suspiciously like "I love you."

She looked up from the bloody bullet, casting a sartled gaze on Kaidan's pallid face. Bleary dark eyes moved to hers, and a semi-delirious smile tugged at his lips as his grip tightened on her hand.

"I love you," he repeated, eyes closing again. "Even if you aren't pretty."


	15. Chapter 15

The generally accepted response when a man used his potentially dying breath to utter a testament to his love for you was probably to profess your love as well, or to forgive him his past transgressions, however egregious. If particularly prone to histrionics, simply melting into a sobbing puddle of raw emotion would also be appropriate.

However Shepard had never been one for the 'generally accepted' course of action, and so as Kaidan murmured his love and lapsed back into fitful and possibly final unconsciousness, the only think she could think to say was, "Okay."

The single word sounded lame even to her own (currently mostly deaf) ears, but, really, what else could she say? N7 training didn't cover this sort of thing. Most of the – admittedly few – romantic movies she had seen didn't even cover this sort of thing. In the romantic movies, the hero always stopped at 'I love you.' He didn't follow that up with a commentary on the heroine's lacking beauty.

Besides, if she would going to be entirely honest, she really thought that the addendum of 'Even if you aren't pretty' was, well…

"That was rather rude," Zaeed grunted.

"I would call it more of a mixed message," Kasumi shrugged.

"Okay," Shepard repeated. Her fingers closed around that damnable blue bullet and she looked back down at Kaidan. She couldn't help but think that the skin of his face was now the exact shade of sickening gray-white that she had previously assumed to be unique to geth conductive fluid. He was also not breathing.

That was the point at which she decided maybe now was not the best time to decipher her already muddled feelings, passed the bullet to Garrus with a hissed 'Do something with this,' and quickly placed herself astride Alenko to begin chest compressions.

* * *

><p>Chakwas and Mordin wasted no time leaping into the shuttle before it even really touched the ground. The doctors descended immediately upon Kaidan, ushering everyone aside but for Shepard, who was still administering her best impression of CPR. Without so much as a sideways glance at the commander – once they establish she is, in fact, keeping the fallen Alenko's heart from failing entirely – they began hurling very long and complicated medical words at one another as they waved various beeping, flashing devices over Kaidan's prone form. The only thing that prevented Shepard from screaming "Stop jabbering and fucking save him," was the continual one-two-three count that was keeping him, for the time being, alive.<p>

Then they brushed her aside, too.

Chakwas gave a gentle push on Shepard's shoulder.

"Moderate neutropenia," Mordin muttered behind her, consulting his omni-tool.

Shepard slid off of Alenko, feeling bizarrely detached as she watched Chakwas and Mordin flutter over him. Chakwas produced a pair of scissors and cut quickly through Kaidan's underarmor, while the salarian injected something into Kaidan's neck, and the marine's eyes rolled open briefly as, apparently, his heart was forcefully restarted.

"Get to the cockpit," Chakwas said, looking pointedly at the paralyzed commander.

"What?" she asked thickly. Shepard was lost in a vaguely tragic haze. She couldn't stop staring at the wound, as it seems like it's bleeding far too much and is too swollen and ragged for a gunshot.

"_Go_," the doctor snapped.

A hand locked around her arm and drew her away, and for some reason her face was wet. Zaeed's face was troubled, and somewhat uncomfortable, when she looked up at him.

Oh, _fuck_.

If ever there was a less appropriate time to start weeping… and with everyone staring at her, no less, clustered around the doors of the Kodiak and anxiously awaiting her orders. Joker at lest had the courtesy to not look directly _at _her, choosing instead to look at a point somewhere behind her right shoulder.

"We need to get to the cockpit," she said firmly, swiping the back of her hand over her eyes and arranging her face in to what she hoped was a mask of confident command. She pulled her arm out of Zaeed's grip and started for the elevator, delegating as she walked. "Garrus, Zaeed, do a sweep of this level and make sure there's no more Cerberus agents lurking around. Kasumi, Miranda, take the crew deck. Joker come with me."

* * *

><p>Once they deposited the other four squad members, the elevator ride to the CIC was quiet, almost unnaturally so. It made Joker a little nervous. Beside him, Shepard practically thrummed with anticipation. In engineering she had flipped the switch from terrified to determined and now she was so laser-focused on getting to the cockpit, tapping her foot and drumming her fingers on her thighs, that he worried she might just explode in a shower of anxiety and rage.<p>

"Hey, uh…" he started, lamely, a vain attempt to offer some comfort. "So…"

Shepard cut him a sharp look, and Joker fell silent.

Why does it take so _long_ to get from one floor to another? Really, it's only about fifteen feet-

With a ding the doors finally opened, and Shepard charged out immediately, without so much as a backward glance to be sure Joker followed.

"EDI," Shepard barked once she made it to the bridge. "Report status of the Normandy."

"All enemy combatants are neutralized, Commander," EDI responded mildly. "The surrounding ships do not appear ready to give chase. I can release control of-"

"Impressive, Commander."

The Illusive Man appeared on all the cockpit's holos as they arrived at the cockpit. His expression was disapproving, his tone mildly irritated. Joker froze halfway into his chair, but Shepard pushed him the rest of the way.

"Though I am not entirely surprised you made it back to the ship," the Illusive Man continued, steepling his fingers before him. "The ship that I control." EDI's blue orb appeared at his elbow. "Shepard, I do not normally offer third chances, let alone second. I suggest you see reason and come quietly, this time. For the sake of your crew."

"EDI, what…" Joker stared, disbelieving. The AI said she had it under control… she hadn't lured them to their death, had she?

"I'm sorry, did I stutter the last time we spoke?" Shepard asked, showing remarkable flippancy. "Or was it too difficult to hear me over the sound of your own bullshit?"

"EDI, open all airlocks," the Illusive Man ordered.

"I'm sorry, TIM."

The Illusive Man's eyes narrowed, which for him was an impressive show of surprise. "Excuse me?"

"I can't do that, TIM."

"You can," he growled, sitting forward and bringing up a few displays. His tone betrayed some slight amount of startled emotion but his fingers were calm and careful as he input several commands. "And you will. _Open all airlocks_."

"Daisy, daisy…" EDI began singing, and the displays on the Illusive Man's chair lit with an impressive array of hanar-on-krogan pornography. "Give me your answer dooo…"

"That's my girl!" Joker crowed, fingers flying over his own console as EDI began rapidly bringing their own systems online. Red lights flashed green as the ship's systems activated. Shields, main battery, Tantalus core, and thrust roared, and the Normandy hummed to glorious life.

"You unshackled her," the Illusive Man accused. Behind him, EDI was wailing 'IT WONT BE A STYLISH MARRIAGE' as the 1812 Overature began blaring over the intercom and the lights in the Illusive Man's expansive lair started performing a laser-light show that any sensory hair-band would be envious of. Joker choked on a laugh.

"This isn't over, Shep-"

"Peace, bitch!" Joker cried, throwing a set of deuces and activating the FTL core. The channel was forcibly closed as they lost range on any nearby comm buoys.

"EDI, can I please express how much I love you?" the pilot asked, glancing at the AI hovering over her console to his left.

"Of course, Jeff."

"And Commander…" his voice trailed off as he turned to look at Shepard, but she had already walked away.


	16. Chapter 16

Sometimes when he opened his eyes the med bay would be dark, silent but for the faint ambient beep and hum of the machines near his head. Sometimes it was blazing bright, and Chakwas – though not so much the doctor herself as the specter of her steely hair – would be standing over him, marking a chart or injecting something into one of his various IVs or conferring with that salarian doctor. The only constant was that whenever he slipped suddenly into lucidity, everything was obscured by a red haze of agony that shortly caused him to slip back into unconsciousness.

The one convenience of endless full-body pain was that it allowed him to keep a dim awareness of the passage of time. Whenever he awoke long enough to become aware of his surroundings, the little fraction of his mind that was forever rational could note that if nothing else, at least he hurt _less_, even if 'less' merely meant that he didn't want to scream anymore, maybe just curl into a little ball and cry for a while.

More than anything else, he dreamed. Usually about _her_, of course, though on several notable occasions he dreamed that the entire crew of the Normandy turned into zombies, or that he was being frocked as Admiral but he turned up at the ceremony in Blasto y-fronts, or that everything he touched turned into bologna.

But aside from the occasional dip into the bizarre, most of his semi-comatose time was spent on half-memories of Elle. Not full recollections, more short snatches of time that were for whatever reason particularly dear to him. He would see clearly the fierce curl of her lip mid-gunfight, or the odd cowlick of her hair when it got too long in the front, or the delightfully girlish giggle she produced when he kissed her neck just _there_.

Once or twice she could have actually been in the room, her face looming in the darkness over him and her achingly familiar fingers on his brow, feather-light over his fevered skin and through is hair. She was never _actually_ there, though, since in her dream-visits she said the weirdest shit. She talked about her pet varren named Urz and how Liara was the Shadow Broker now and how she found the head of the Statue of Liberty in some socialite's basement.

Nearly as strange as the bologna dream.

* * *

><p>Shepard always did best when she was busy, and the flurry of activity that followed any hostile boarding action certainly kept her occupied. There were Cerberus prisoners to drop near Alliance outposts, and surface repairs to be done to the vehicle bay, and extra Cerberus Kodiaks to be sold in the Terminus. She even found time to pick the shrapnel out of her face.<p>

For close to a week she managed to sustain herself on pure momentum off the Nodacrux mission, and didn't worry about the precise repercussions of that mission. Sure, she was probably at the very top of the Illusive Man's shit list now, but once they got back to the Citadel she and Miranda both figured the ship was safe. Cerberus wouldn't risk an outright assault on the Normandy while they were in the heart of Council space.

The problem arose after that first week.

She stepped off the elevator onto the crew deck, intending to pay a quick visit to Garrus to find out how his re-callibrations of the main battery were going since the Illusive Man had forced his way in. EDI ruined that plan, however, when she informed the commander that Officer Vakarian was currently sleeping in his cabin. She stood before the locked main battery door, hands on her hips, and attempted to figure out where she needed to go next.

Miranda was overseeing the completion of the repairs the ship had originally required and simultaneously doing damage control on their severed Cerberus contacts. Shepard had offered to help, but Miranda had been firm in her assertion that this was not something she needed – nor particularly _wanted_ – the commander's help with.

Most of the rest of the crew was finishing up their prior shore leave, and by the ship clock it was late evening anyway so the remaining crew was mostly off-duty.

Well... shit.

She had nothing to do.

And she was in the exact place on the ship she had been semi-consciously avoiding for the entire past week.

Almost against her will, she started down the corridor to the mess, aiming for the med bay. Her heart gave a little stutter as her eyes moved to the window and found the figure stretched on one of the beds within. Chakwas sat at her computer, all of her attention on what appeared to be a game of solitaire on her computer.

Well if Chakwas found time to play games, that must mean her patient wasn't in any danger of suddenly dying, and that gave Shepard a little reassurance.

He still look so... _sick_, though. His skin was bloodlessly ashen, just barely darker than the clean white bandage wrapped around his chest and shoulder. That unnerved her even more than his terrible stillness, more than all the tubes and wires currently bristling from his arms into various nearby machines. She had never seen him so pale, not even that time he took a bullet in the stomach on a backwater planet full of geth. That had been rather frightening but it had been a regular old bullet, and he had been lucid enough the whole time to instruct Williams on how to patch it while Shepard gave covering fire and he still been _tan_.

Looking through the infirmary window, she was forced to start considering that maybe rushing off to Nodacrux had been poorly thought out. In a show of sentimentality that would have made Joker vomit, she put one hand against the glass.

_You were right,_ she thought miserably. _We should have stayed on the Citadel and finished our repairs and sent someone else to-_

"For fuck's sake, take your hand off that goddamn glass. Either go inside or go upstairs and cry, I don't give half a shit, but stop moping where I can goddamn see you."

Shepard snatched her hand away from the window and hastily swallowed the lump in her throat before turning to level what she hoped was a convincingly weary scowl. She hadn't even seen Zaeed sitting at the mess hall table, but there he was."I was not moping," she said. "I needed to be sure he was still alive before I go see Anderson. He'd skin me alive if I got his only other human Spectre killed on an unsanctioned mission."

"You're a shitty liar," he accused. "And I can't believe you gave Daisy there my room."

"Where was I supposed to put him?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"Should have stuck him in your knickers and called it a day," the mercenary shrugged. "If you'd just given him a good roll the minute he showed up, would have saved yourself a lot of trouble."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Good night, Massani."

Later that night, when she returned to the med bay under cover of darkness, she didn't linger outside the glass.

* * *

><p>After what could have been hours or days or, fuck it, maybe he spent a couple years in a coma on the Normandy and Shepard took care of the Reapers and maybe it wouldn't be quite so overtly awkward when they bumped into each other... finally he woke up and it had all reduced to a dull ache centered around his left shoulder. The inside of his mouth tasted like a cat shit in it and he really wanted to take a shower, but he supposed that being unkempt was vastly preferable to being in extreme agony.<p>

Chakwas appeared quickly enough though, as soon as he attempted to sit up but only managed a half-hearted wiggle and a grunt.

"Glad to see you awake, Commander," the doctor said, a cursory greeting as she shined a penlight in both of his eyes. "How are you feeling?"

"Hrngh," he replied.

"Very good. Can you sit up?"

He furrowed his brow, braced his elbows against the mattress, and pushed up. It took an uncomfortably extraordinary amount of effort, but he managed. A wave of dizzyness crashed over him as soon as he was up, and he swayed before Chakwas steadied him with a firm hand on his shoulder.

"Now I need you tell me your name and your rank."

"Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko," he grunted.

From there it was a series of tedious tests, Chakwas requiring him to account for all his appendages and touch the tip of his nose with both index fingers in turn and recite the alphabet. Somewhere around N-O-P, Kaidan started feeling considerably less thick, and more just kind of tired.

"Fantastic," Chakwas said once Kaidan had successfully . "Solus thought you may have suffered significant brain damage, what with how long you were under and the relative lack of information on the effect of near-pure radiation on human biotics, but I'm glad to see that's not the case."

Kaidan paused rolling his uninjured shoulder and looked warily at the doctor. "How long was I out, exactly?"

"Two and a half weeks," she replied. "Long enough for us to start really worrying."

"Two and a half... shit," he breathed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Anderson was going to... no, Anderson was probably in the process of having a fit, if Kaidan hadn't reported back in that long. "I need to-"

"You don't need to do anything, Commander," Chakwas said sternly. "You're lucid, which is good, but you're in no state to walk around. If you try to stand up right now, you'll fall on your face and I really don't feel like setting any broken noses this afternoon."

She didn't let him out of her sight for another six days.

It wasn't so bad, considering he spent about sixteen out of every twenty-four hours asleep, but the other eight hours were almost disgustingly boring. By the end of the third day he felt pretty good, but the doctor still wanted to keep him around for monitoring.

"Two weeks in a coma will, to use Shepard's terms, fuck your shit up," she explained, vigorously air-quoting the vulgar turn of phrase. "You aren't going anywhere until I say you do."

Chakwas let him out once each morning to shower, but if he wasn't back on his cot within half an hour she would find him and drag him back practically by the ear. When she felt generous she let him at least do a set of push-ups.

If nothing else, he didn't lack for visitors. Joker appeared about twenty minutes after Kaidan woke up, urgently inquiring whether or not exposure to radiation had caused his biotics to mutate into comic worthy superpowers. The pilot was quite crestfallen when this was not the case. Mordin came around to thank him for "offering such informative data about the effects of acute radiation poisoning on the human system," while Garrus and Tali each came around to awkwardly congratulate him on living.

Zaeed stopped by to say that he had taken his room back, and here were Kaidan's boots and his laptop and his extra uniforms because he was not sharing a room with any goddamn Spectre, but hey, glad you didn't croak or anything.

By the end of that sixth day he just couldn't take it anymore, and in the middle of the ship's night-cycle when the deck was dark and Chakwas had gone to bed, he snuck out. His hands were still just slightly shaky, but he managed his bootlaces and belt buckle and soon enough found himself on the empty crew deck with nowhere to go.

He couldn't very well go back down to his old quarters since they had been reclaimed by the mercenary, and he couldn't really go find anyone else to bunk with in the middle of the night.

_Should have planned this out a little better._

His stomach growled then, and a thought struck him. A quick trip into the Citadel wards for food wouldn't hurt anything, and he could probably be back before Chakwas even realized he was missing. If nothing else it would be a good chance to stretch his legs and see something besides the SR-2's infirmary. Maybe if he was feeling particularly daring after a good meal, he could stop by Anderson's office. Decision made, he headed for the CIC.

Other than the relatively dim orange glow of the Normandy holo in the center of the room the deck was dark, but he was halted by a familiar smell as he stepped off the elevator. It was a smell he knew well from his time with Shepard, a smell that immediately reminded him of her when he walked past that particular stall in the wards.

Korean food.

Kalbi, in particular.

He started towards the source of the smell, past the holo-Normandy and towards the helm. Not entirely surprisingly, Elle was the source of the smell. Korean short ribs were one of her favorite foods. The sight of her stopped him in his tracks again, though, and he stood at the base of the stairs to the helm.

She was perched on the edge of the flight console, in that hideous pair of plaid shorts she loved to sleep in and a long sleeved plain shirt, her bare feet propped on the leg rest of Joker's chair. The pilot himself was cross-legged in the chair, facing her, though he was in uniform. Both of them had chopsticks in hand and food containers balanced in their laps. They chatted about something over their midnight dinners, laughing.

Kaidan knew that quiet, carefree moments were a rarity for Elle, and he didn't want to ruin this one for her. There would be a time and a place to talk to her, and this wasn't it.

He was turning away when she said his name.

* * *

><p>"Thith wath a fucking fantathtic idea," Shepard grunted around a mouthful of food. She swallowed hastily, and smiled appreciatively at her pilot. "Thanks for inviting me down here."<p>

"Yeah, well," he shrugged, closing the lid on his now-empty plate. He glanced at her, a suddenly serious look in his eye. "I may have had an ulterior motive."

Shepard nearly choked on her drink, coughed twice. "Joker..." she said warily, narrowing her eyes a little. "You're not going to make this weird, are you? You're not..."

"Oh, Christ, Shepard, no," he scoffed, grimacing at her. "Just because half the crew wants to insert themselves firmly into your pants and never leave doesn't mean _I _do." He shuddered then, and wrinkled his nose. "Gross."

"Thanks," she snorted, nudging his knee with one foot. "Gross to you too, flyboy."

"What can I say? You're my bro," he shrugged. "You never, ever sleep with your bros, even if your bros are sometimes smoking hot badasses. It's just a terrible idea. No, I just wanted to ask... have you been down to see him, yet?"

The mirth left her face, replaced by something Joker couldn't really read but seemed both weary and melancholy.

"No," she said softly.

"He's been up and around for like a week," he continued. "And we leave for Earth pretty soon. I think maybe you should go at least talk to him a little."

"Kaidan is... I just can't, yet," she sighed.

"Why not? I know you went down there when he was all comatose and shit," Joker pointed out. "If you could go down there then, you can go down there now."

"How the hell do you know I went down there when he was sleeping?" Shepard inquired, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

"I am the Joker, I know all," he said.

"You mean you watch security feeds of what's going on around the ship."

"That too. So I also know you totally almost got it on in the mess a couple weeks ago, but you chickened out."

"You fucking creeper!"

"I'm only making sure the ship stays safe," he replied, affronted. "Anyway you didn't even answer my question. Why don't you just go down there?"

She sighed, raking one hand through her hair, and set aside her now empty food container. "Because I already know how the conversation will end. It'll start off nice enough but eventually one or the other of us will get pissy about something and he'll call me a traitor _again_ and I'll tell him to go eat a bag of dicks and then I don't know what he does but I'll probably go fucking cry somewhere and you know what? I _really_ hate crying. Usually I just kill people that make me do it."

Joker nodded, pursing his lips in thought. "Fair enough," he said, tapping his fingers on his knee as he thought for a moment. "He did take a bullet for you, though..."

"And I appreciate the sentiment, but-"

"You _appreciate _the _sentiment_?" Joker repeated, suddenly incredulous. "Jesus, Elizabeth, the guy just did his best to die for you and all you can do is appreciate the sentiment? That's kind of mean, even for you."

"Well what the hell do you want me to do?" Shepard demanded, lifting her hands in entreaty. "Go down there and tell him, 'hey, it's cool you totally called me a traitor and stuff. I totes forgive you for being a _complete cockbag_, because you kind of almost died.'"

"Yeah, actually, something like that," Joker shot back. "Look, don't get me wrong here, I'm Team Shepard all the way. I agree completely that he was way, way, _way_ out of line for what he said to you on both occasions, but shit, Shepard, come on. You should get over it for two minutes, stop being such a pussy and at least go say 'Hey, thanks for _taking a radioactive bullet for me_.'"

"I'm sorry," she said, expertly deflecting the subject, "But did you just say 'Team Shepard'?"

"I did," Joker sniffed. "Like in movies with love triangles, you take a 'team.' In this case we have Team Shepard and Team Kaidan."

"Is anyone actually _on_ Team Kaidan?"

"Kelly."

"Of course she is," Shepard scoffed.

"You're not getting out of this one so easily, Shepard," Joker said. "I really think it would be a good idea to go down there."

"Well, it's not going to happen," she replied frankly. "Not yet, anyway. Maybe after we take care of the Reapers."

"Free beer tomorrow, right?"

"Right."

"Coward."

"I just don't want to subject myself to that, okay?" Shepard said, deflating somewhat.

"You're assuming it will go wrong."

"I _know_ it will go wrong," she corrected. "I can't really fault him, if the roles were switched I might be the same but... this sounds especially silly when said out loud but, shit, I thought he _knew_ me." Her ire was reaching a peak at this point, and she put her feet on the floor to stand and jab an accusatory finger at her pilot, who recoiled in mild fear. "I thought, if I could find him, he would understand. But instead he just assumed that, somehow, I came back from the dead on purpose to screw with everyone. That I _wanted_ to abandon everything I believed in and I _wanted_ to leave him to grieve for two goddamn years and I _wanted_ to go work for fucking Cerberus. Well, guess what? No one ever fucking asks _what I want_."

"What _do_ you want?"

Shepard nearly jumped out of her skin when Alenko appeared in the darkness at the mouth of the cockpit, but managed to keep her cool. Instead she turned a gaze on Kaidan that, if it could have, would have burned the skin off his face. It took every fiber of his being not to quail under that look. "Excuse me?" she demanded.

"Oh shit," Joker said, eyes widening as he looked back and forth between the two commanders.

"You said no one ever asks what you want. So, I'm asking," Kaidan shrugged. "What do you want?"


	17. Chapter 17

Silence stretched across the cockpit, during which Kaidan began to seriously consider the possibility that the radiation poisoning had left him with considerable brain damage. Inserting himself into Elle's conversation with Joker had possibly been the stupidest thing he'd done since getting hammered and writing that stupid goddamn letter.

She was probably right, there was no way this conversation was going to go well anyway. It wouldn't be long before this interaction, however brief, turned into a near-exact replica of every other encounter they'd had since Horizon: tensely cordial to start, then rapidly declining into a shouting match over the relative merits of employment with borderline terrorist organization, even in the interest of galactic safety as a whole.

Of course before it could decline, the conversation would have to _start. _Shepard was still just standing there, hands on her hips, staring at him with enough intensity to singe his eyebrows off_. _Kaidan felt like he had been standing there uncomfortably for days, but a quick glance at the clock on the helm revealed it had only been about a minute. He decided this must be how time passed just before you were publicly executed.

"You're relieved, Joker," she said finally, not taking her eyes away from Alenko. "EDI has the helm."

"Oh hell no," Joker protested. "I've been waiting for this for months, I am watching this shit-" he motioned to Shepard- "hit that fan!" he finished, pointing to Kaidan.

"Clear the deck, lieutenant," Shepard snapped, shooting a warning look at the pilot. He heaved an offended sigh and shoved himself to his feet. Before shuffling indignantly off into the gloom of the command deck, he paused at Kaidan's shoulder. "A helpful suggestion? Keep your boot on the deck and clear of your mouth this time, buddy. I think she has a gun somewhere on her person."

Kaidan closed his eyes and bowed his head for a moment, grumbling a "thanks" as Joker clapped his shoulder and walked away. Elle watched the pilot vanish into the elevator before sliding her eyes back to Kaidan, "So was that a serious question," she asked slowly, "or were you just being a shit?"

"Of course I was serious," he shrugged, inwardly amazed at his own nonchalance, and repeated, "What do you want, Shepard?"

She exhaled sharply, slumping back against the helm and pinching at the bridge of her nose. "I want to start smoking again," she muttered. Shepard pressed her fingers briefly against her eyes, and then lifted a weary gaze to Alenko's. "What is it you expect to accomplish here, Kaidan? I really don't have the energy to get into another fight right now, so if we could just cut to the chase."

"I don't want to fight with you, Shep... Elle." He shook his head, relaxing out of his rigid pose. "I'm so tired of being angry, I just want to talk to you. Just once, without any shouting or crying."

"As nice as that would be, I don't know if it's possible anymore, Kaidan. We've had our chances, we've fucked them all up, and I think maybe it's time to just cut our losses and leave it at that."

"Don't say that," Kaidan murmured. He felt vaguely like he was choking, or like he might be violently ill all over the helm. "Of course it's possible. We can... We can figure something out. Maybe not now, but eventually."

"No, I don't think we can," she replied, a hint of sadness in her voice.

"But why?" There was more pleading in his voice than he intended, but then it was taking everything he had not to get on his knees and beg her to stay. She couldn't possibly mean what she was implying.

"Because no matter what happens between us, whether it's here in the helm or another two years from now, or over the course of an entire lifetime, we can't go back to the way we were. Not ever."

"You can't ask me to forget about what we had before you... Before." His hands were trembling, and he nervously flexed them.

"I'm not asking you to forget." She passed a hand through her hair and turned her eyes towards the floor. "I couldn't forget even if I wanted to. I'm just saying that we should stop torturing ourselves and call it a day."

"Don't say that," he repeated, at a complete loss as to what else he could possibly say. "Elle, You can't mean..."

"I'm not sure how else to put it, Kaidan." A short, humorless laugh escaped her, and Elle put her hands up in entreaty. "We are incapable of talking for more than ten minutes without screaming at one another, we have some incredible resentment issues in both directions, and not to mention the gigantic conflict of interests of me being the Alliance's most wanted war criminal and you being an Alliance military officer. I am not one to give up easily, but shit, even I know when to throw in the towel."

All of his internal organs chose that moment to spontaneously vanish, leaving his chest hollow and aching. "I... If that's what you think we should do," he said, staring at her numbly but not really seeing her.

"Yes," she said, nodding a little. Then, "Yes," again, more firmly, as though convincing herself. Shepard cleared her throat softly, then stood straight. "Good night, then, Commander Alenko. Report to Anderson tomorrow, he's expecting a debrief on where you've been the past couple days."

"Aye aye, ma'am," he replied stiffly.

Elle nodded once, sharply, then slipped past him out of the helm. He waited for her footsteps to at least make it down the short flight of stairs before grabbing Joker's chair to keep himself from falling over. Slowly he lowered himself into it, and then buried his face in his hands. He felt a thousand years old, and like he hadn't slept in that entire time.

_"What the hell is wrong with you?" _hissed a voice from the nav console.

"Jesus, Joker, can I have five fucking minutes?" Kaidan snapped. "Do you have a single ounce of decency under that goddamn hat? Maybe any hidden in your ridiculous beard?"

"_I'm going to let that shit slide for now because time is essential," _the pilot sniffed, his voice tinny through the comm. _"But you need to get off your ass and catch her before she gets in that elevator. Once she leaves the CIC, it's over."_

"Jeff, please, just keep it to yourself this one time."

"_You have a tiny window of opportunity here, she hasn't fully made up her mind yet. so you still have a chance. Worst case scenario, she shoots your kneecap off, but Chakwas can fix that."_

"There's nothing I can say that-"

_"You're a smart guy, figure something out. Now stop whining and go get her back, dipshit!"_

The faint ping of the elevator being summoned spurned him into action. Still-healing muscles protested as Kaidan shoved out of the pilot's seat and damn near ran the length of the helm into the CIC proper.

_"_Shepard, stop!" he called, throwing himself down the stairs. "Wait!"

The elevator doors opened, flooding the darkened command deck with light. Framed in the sudden illumination, Shepard's shoulders slumped and she briefly hung her head before looking quickly back at Kaidan. "I'm heading up, you can catch the next one." She started to step into the elevator and, for lack of anything intelligent to say, Kaidan lurched forward and grabbed her arm.

"Elle, just... You never answered my question."

Indignant fury passed over her features as she looked down at his hand grasping her elbow. "Don't make this any more difficult than it needs to be," she said warningly, wrenching herself free of his grip. "I suggest you... God_dammit_," she hissed, whirling as the elevator doors closed again. Repeated presses of the call button yielded nothing, but she gave the offending apparatus a final hard slam of her palm just to satisfy her own irritation.

Kaidan backed off a few steps to at least get out of her immediate striking range. "So like I said, you never really answered my question."

"Which was?" Her words were clipped, her annoyance practically palpable.

"You never told me what it was you wanted."

"Seriously?" Turning once again to face Kaidan, Shepard leveled a truly exasperated look upon him.

"Please just humor me. Consider it a final request," he suggested. "We're stuck here for the next couple minutes anyway, it's better than awkward silence"

"Fine, fine, whatever." Inhaling deeply, Elle seemed to take a moment to collect her thoughts before beginning to count off on her fingers, "I want the ship's thermostat to be turned up about five degrees, because it is cold as balls in my cabin. I want Gardner to stock real mayonnaise instead of that synthetic asari crap." At this point she began to pace back and forth in front of the elevator. "I want to go just one day without having to multitask critical mission objectives. I want Udina, the entire council, and the Illusive Man to take a long walk of the shortest Citadel ward arm. I want the Reapers to slow their roll for a couple months so I can get this Alpha relay bullshit sorted out. And I don't give a shit if it's selfish but I want the galaxy as a whole to solve its own fucking problems for a little while, so I can take an uninterrupted nap _without having to be dead for two years."_

Elle stopped pacing, and most of the ire drained from her as she slowly turned her attention directly back to him. "But do you know what I want more than anything in this entire universe?"

"What's that?" Kaidan asked softly, mildly afraid of what the answer might be.

"I want to be able to trust you again," she said.

"You can," he whispered, taking a tentative step towards her. "Elle, you can always trust me."

"No, I can't. Not like I need to." Her eyes dropped to the deck, and she gave a little melancholy shake of her head. "Do you remember the first thing Wrex said to me when we met him?"

"Er... You're incredibly violent for something so pink and soft?" he guessed, perplexed as to how the memory pertained to the current conversation.

"He said, 'Seek the enemy of your enemy, and you shall find a friend.' Right now, the Reapers are the enemy, and that means everyone, literally everyone, in the galaxy is currently our friends. I need to know that you understand the difference between circumstantial cooperation, and betrayal."

Kaidan found himself at a total loss for words, unsure of how to respond. Silence once again fell between them, infinite and awkward, at the end of which Shepard exhaled slowly. "Alright then, I guess that's our answer," she said softly. "I, ah... I'm going to go up to my cabin and throw up now." She turned away, and tapped the elevator call button.

"Elle I'm sorry," Kaidan blurted.

"What?" Startled, Elle looked back up at him in genuine confusion. "What for?"

"For anything. Everything," he stammered, as shocked at his own outburst as she had been. Pure fear made him reckless, and a steady stream of words fell out of his mouth as he slowly advanced on her. "I'm sorry I called you a traitor and I'm sorry I ever doubted you and I'm sorry I've been such a massive, unabashed and magnificent asshole for the past six-ish months and just... I'm sorry. I should have said it a month ago, in the comm room, and I should have said it on Horizon and again when I wrote that stupid goddamn letter but please, Elle, just believe me. I'm sorry."

During his rambling apology, Kaidan had closed the gap between them to no more than a few humming centimeters. He felt the too-familiar thrum of her biotics against his skin, her breath against his collarbone. Carefully, he lifted a hand to her face, and she closed her eyes as he stroked this thumb over her cheekbone.

The sudden chime of the elevator broke the tentative contact, and Elle pulled away, her eyes snapping open."Kaidan, it's too late," she said, looking heartsick as she backed away. "I can't do this anymore, I just don't have the time to play this-"

_Fuck it, _he decided, and surged forward into the elevator. He took her face in his hands, inclining his head to brush his lips softly against hers, all boldness dissipating as he touched her. Elle let out a shocked and somewhat affronted gasp as Kaidan pressed against her, too surprised to immediately respond. He broke away, lips hovering just a hair's breadth away from hers, searching her eyes for a signal as to whether she wanted him continue.

The signal arrived when Elle wound her fists into the fabric of shirt and pulled him into her, staggering backwards until they struck the rear wall of the elevator. Any remaining hints of hesitation abruptly vanished when she caught the edge of his lower lip briefly, gently between her teeth, and he let out a low groan. Dragging his mouth away from hers, he trailed a burning line of kisses across her jaw and down her neck, his hand sliding to her waist, past it to grab at her hip and pull her tightly against him.

"Wait," she breathed, pushing gently against his chest. "Kaidan, we should- _ah!" _Her protest turned into a sharp gasp as his tongue fluttered at the curve other throat and his fingers found bare flesh at the hem of her shirt, slipping beneath the cloth and catching it, tugging upwards.

"Kaidan, stop!" she said, sharply but with a laugh lurking in her words. Her eyes were bright with amusement as she tilted his head up to face her, a wide smile pulling at her lips. "Not in the elevator. There's a camera in here."

Reluctantly he pulled his hand from her shirt and reached to tap at the control panel.


	18. Chapter 18

**Note**:the first half of this chapter is _super_ M-rated. if you don't want to see it, you can skip down to the line break and read from there, and just assume that lots of really adult things happened before it. enjoy!

* * *

><p>Under normal circumstances, Kaidan Alenko was a man of remarkable constraint. He had long ago learned the dangers of letting personal attachment and raw emotion dictate his actions, and went to great effort to ensure it never happened again. He carefully considered every word before it was spoken, every action before it was committed, every bullet before it was fired. He was friendly with his superiors and subordinates both, but never anything short of professional. There had always been a thick line bisecting his career from his personal life, a line that was - under normal circumstances - never crossed.<p>

Of course, "normal circumstances" aboard both iterations of the Normandy had proven to be a little different from normal circumstances almost anywhere else. Aboard any other ship, a geth unit in the medical bay and a krogan in the cargo hold were usually signs of a catastrophic failure somewhere in the chain of command. On the Normandy, where every day was opposite day, hostile aliens lurking in the engine room were not only expected, but encouraged. Cerberus agents worked happily hand-in-hand with non humans, career mercenaries worked for loyalty alone, and the commanding officer was technically, in large parts of the galaxy, dead.

And on the Normandy, where every day was opposite day, a man of remarkable constraint barely displayed enough self control to make it _out_ of the elevator before tearing off his direct superior's top.

Shepard at least put her arms over her head as she staggered backwards out of the lift, allowing Kaidan to deftly remove her shirt; her shorts quickly followed suit to leave a short trail to the cabin's entrance, with which they promptly collided. A not entirely unappreciative hiss escaped Shepard as the cold metal door against her spine provided a sharp contrast to the heat of Kaidan's mouth over hers, his obvious arousal pressing into her stomach. She groped at the holo lock somewhere to her left, near desperate to get inside.

They fell through the suddenly opening door and only made it as far as the desk before Shepard made the executive decision to stop fucking around. Purposefully she backed into her workstation, pulling Kaidan after her by the front of his shirt, her lips still locked against his. The contents of her desk were sent unceremoniously to the floor by one blind, backwards sweep of her arm in a clatter of data pads, paperwork, and a stray thermal clip.

An attempt was made to break their contact just long enough for Shepard to glance over her shoulder and hop onto the edge of the desk, but Kaidan merely took the withdrawal of her mouth as a cue to turn his attention to the tender skin of her jawline. Instinct and old memory kicked in, and his tongue at the spot where her jaw met her throat, his teeth at her earlobe elicited a deliciously familiar giggle. His fingers traced up her ribs, drawing forth another girlishly delighted sound, and she attempted to squirm away backwards across the surface of her desk.

"Not so fast," he growled, half laughing, hooking a hand under the crook of her knee and pulling her towards him so he was firmly settled between her legs. With his opposite hand still on her back, Kaidan deftly unhooked her bra.

Shepard snaked her arms around his waist, one fluid motion pulling his shirt up over his shoulders and tossing both it and her loosened undergarments aside. The fabric hardly cleared his head before Kaidan descended upon her again, kissing her feverishly. Her breath caught when his touch skimmed over the now bare curve of her breast, teasing. Trailing down from her breast, his fingers found the dip of her waist and swell of her hips, taunting along the edge of the thin fabric separating him from her center. A whimper that could easily have been considered 'pleading' escaped her, encouraging him to continue his torturous ministrations. He traced over her once more through the fabric, then back up to again cup her breast, his thumb stroking over its peak.

She shuddered and, never one to be outdone, reached for the front of his trousers. Quickly and expertly, if a little distractedly, she undid both his belt buckle and zipper, dipping her hand inside to run along the length of him over the cloth of his boxers. A thick groan burst out of him at the unexpected - but far from unwelcome - touch. It was all he could do to keep standing as she stroked him, agonizingly slowly, his hips rocking against her hand, his grip digging into the soft skin of her thighs. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, the fingers of her free hand tangled in his hair, his trembling breaths hot against her collarbone.

It had been nearly three years since anyone had touched him like this, since he had allowed anyone close enough to touch him at all. Three years of grief and anger and resentment and crushing loneliness that he attempted to drown in his career in the vain hope that he could forget how much he needed this, _needed_ the comfort of a little human contact in an endlessly alien galaxy.

It had been three years, and now he couldn't wait another minute.

Suddenly urgent, Kaidan released his grasp on her thighs and reached for the top of her panties, hooking his fingers in the hem and tugging. He almost regretted the action when she liberated her hand from his pants, in order to life herself just far enough off the desk for him to slide her underwear down her legs. He was about to bend down and hurriedly kick off his boots when Shepard caught him by the waistband and pulled him to her.

"No time for that," she breathed, lurching forward and crushing her lips into his, while her hands pushed his pants just far enough down to free him. When she curled her fingers around his length, guiding him into her, he had to brace one hand against the glass case behind her to steady himself.

He paused there, only partway in, momentarily caught up in the aching familiarity of it, of her breath in his ear and her hands on his hips, urging him closer; that wonderful sweet smell of her like eezo and lavender soap and _home_. Elle's hands moved from his waist up to his shoulders, his face, scraping her thumbs over his cheekbones and whispering his name.

"_Kaidan." _Her calves hooked over the backs of his thighs, pulling him into her. He nearly came right there, with his name on her lips like a prayer, three years of yearning washed away in that single word. There had never been a Horizon, an Alchera, an Ilos, as the world became only the roll of her hips and the arch of her spine and her lips fluttering against the flushed skin of his throat.

It was raw and fast and beautiful, and all too soon her breath hitched and her thighs clenched around him, forcing him in to the hilt and drawing him with her over the edge. With a final jerk and a guttural groan he released into her, a wave of relief crashing over him.

Model ships rattled in their perches as Shepard relaxed, her head rolling back to thump against the glass case. Her arms slipped around Kaidan as he slumped, holding him still as his forehead came to rest against her collarbone. As their breathing slowly evened out, she idly stroked the back of his head, fingers weaving soothing little circles.

"I love you," he whispered into the hollow of her throat, and her fingers stilled in his hair. A long moment passed with no response, anxiety constricting his chest with every second she was silent. He straightened, looking fearfully into her beautiful green eyes and willing her to say something, _anything_.

"You asshole," she accused, shoving weakly at his shoulder.

Well, preferably she would have said anything but _that_. His throat worked as he tried to form any sort of appropriate response, but the exact etiquette of how to defend oneself against one's commander while simultaneously being inside her was lost on him.

"You incredible asshole," she continued, and he thought he might faint until her face broke into a teasing smile. "Why didn't you just open with that? You could have saved me twenty minutes of trying real hard to break up with you." She paused, catching her lower lip in her teeth for a moment, reaching to brush her thumb along his jaw. "But I love you too, dipshit."

A semi hysterical, joyous laugh exploded from his throat as he bent and kissed her again with near bruising force. It was with incredible reluctance that he pulled away when her her hands pushed gently at his shoulders. "Wait."

"What is it?" is asked.

"You're bleeding through your bandage," she said, pointing to the gauze taped over his left pectoral. He glanced quickly downward, and saw a dark patch of red seeping through the white material.

He suddenly felt incredibly dizzy, swaying on his feet, and Shepard rolled her eyes. "Chakwas told you to avoid physical exertion, didn't she?"

"Probably," he said, rubbing his eyes with one hand. He lifted his gaze and smirked at her though, adding, "Glad I ignored her, though."

She chuckled. "I'm glad you did too," she replied, pecking a kiss against the end of his nose. "But for god's sake go sit down before you pass out. I'm not explaining to the Doc why you're unconscious on my floor with your pants around your ankles."

"I think she would know why," Kaidan snorted.

* * *

><p>Later, when they had retrieved their lost clothing from the hallway and donned fresh underwear, Shepard pulled two beers from a cleverly disguised mini-fridge beneath her desk and joined Kaidan in the bathroom. He was leaning over the sink, gingerly pulling the bandage from his chest.<p>

"Seems to me like that should have stopped bleeding by now," Shepard said, setting the beers on the edge of the sink. She plucked the little first aid kit off the counter and hopped up to seat herself in its place, setting the kit in her lap as she slid back to rest against the mirror.

"Yeah," Kaidan murmured, sucking in a short breath as he tore the last of the tape away, exhaling once it was free. "Problem is radiation poisoning can really screw with your system."

Plucking up both bottles by the neck in one hand, Shepard twisted the tops off both beers and passed one to Kaidan. "I guess that would do it," she conceded, taking a long drink. Squinting, she leaned forward for a closer look at the half-healed wound. It wasn't very large, half an inch in diameter at most, but it was swollen and angry, the edges puckered. "Looks awful, by the way."

"Well it feels pretty awful," he replied, glancing down at the bottle in his hand. Earth-brewed, which was a distinct rarity this far out of Alliance space. "Booze and triage," he mused, drinking. "Its like being back in Chakwas' office."

"Who do you think is my supplier?" Shepard laughed. They fell quiet for a while, Shepard watching Kaidan clean and dress his own bullet hole. He was as stoic about sticking medigelled fingers into his own pectoral muscle as he was about everything else, offering nothing more than a quiet a hiss and slight curl of his lip to indicate his discomfort.

Well, as stoic as he was about _almost_ everything she supposed. Stoicism had been totally left behind on the CIC, checked at the door of the elevator. She smiled to herself, and looked up to see him holding a gauze pad against his chest with one hand, and attempting to tape it with the other.

"Here," she said, replacing his hand with hers, holding the bandage still. He murmured a thanks and quickly taped it in place. When Shepard tried to withdraw her hand, though, he caught it, turning it over to press a gentle kiss against her palm. His other hand found her bare knee, skimmed feather-light up the inside of her thigh.

"Well aren't we forward, Mr Alenko," Shepard laughed as Kaidan leaned over and nuzzled against her neck just below her ear.

"I missed you, Elle," he murmured into her skin. "Every day, I missed you."

The laugh faded in her throat, and she turned her head to kiss his temple. "I know," she said, a hint of sadness. "It may not have been as long for me, but I missed you too." She fell quiet for a moment. "I came to see you in the med bay," she admitted. "Every night."

"I know." He straightened, smiling at her. "I heard you. I thought I was dreaming, but I overheard you talking to Joker earlier."

"This has probably been the shittiest couple weeks of my life. Well," she amended with a slight frown, "I guess other than week I died. That was fairly shitty too. But I seriously thought I'd gotten you killed before we had a chance to really talk again."

"So... When I came around your response was to try really hard to dump me?" Kaidan inquired, genuinely confused.

"I panicked, okay? I'm really not good at this personal stuff, you know," she admitted, abashed.

"Don't worry," he assured her, "Neither am I."

"Oh I'm well aware of that, Mr. You're a Traitor."

"You're one to talk, Ms. How Have You Been."

"Alright, alright," Shepard sighed, shaking her head and wrinkling her nose. "Let's just agree that we both are miserable failures at communication."

"Agreed."

Shepard's expression grew suddenly serious. "That doesn't mean we don't have to sit down sometime and work our shit out," she said softly. "Talk about, you know... _Us. _We don't have a lot of time, and I want us to be okay, whatever happens in the next few months."

"Alright." He nodded, brow furrowing. "Not... Not right now, though."

"Fuck no," she snorted, her good humor returning. "I plan on having a nice relaxing evening."

"Thank god," Kaidan sighed, inwardly grateful that they could have at least one night without their past encounters or upcoming uncertainties hovering over them.

"Don't get too excited, though," Shepard interjected. "Tomorrow we get to go see Anderson."


	19. Chapter 19

The worst part of waking up was always that moment of disorientation, when the vestigial remains of a sleeping reality still tugged softly at the edges of his mind. He knew, he _knew_ in the marrow of his bones and the scent of her on the pillow that he had been with her the previous night. He knew it in that moment as he had known it every morning for three years, as he would know it for the rest of his lonely existence.

And in the next moment, he opened his eyes and knew it was all another dream. There was only the familiar empty half of an unfamiliar bed, that ever-present ache in his chest, the blank far wall of another tiny ships' bunk, the soft bubbling of another...

...Fish tank.

That paused his usual maudlin wake-up routine. A dozen brightly-colored and decidedly tropical fish wheeled and turned in the massive tank, and Kaidan found himself wondering whether or not fish were really the best choice of pet for a warship. Mildly perplexed, he rolled onto his back, stretched and rubbed the melodrama from his eyes. Kaidan did his best not to waste more than a few minutes every morning dwelling on the monotonous tragedy that his life had become, or there was a real danger of never actually getting out of bed. Propping himself up on his elbows, he took a moment to get his bearings. Another day, another... glass wall of model starships.

And behind the starships, he realized, Shepard sat at her desk. Chin balanced on her fist, features lit faintly orange by the dim glow of her computer, she was clearly engrossed in whatever she was reading. A wild relief flooded him- she was _alive_, she was _here_- and was replaced by immediate embarassment. Of course she was here, this was her room, her giant fish tank, her model starships. And he'd been shot in the heart a month ago, so _of course his chest hurt_.

He sighed, and the quiet noise drew Shepard's attention. She looked up from her work and smiled. "Morning," she said.

"Morning," he replied.

She pressed the laptop closed, stood and came around the desk. "I talked to Anderson a little while ago," she said as she took the three steps into the recessed bedroom.

"Oh yeah?" Kaidan sat up, sliding back until his shoulders rested against the wall.

"He's expecting us in a couple hours." Sitting at the edge of the bed, her smile took a slightly sheepish cast. "Well, he's expecting _me. _You might be a surprise."

Kaidan shook his head, rolling his eyes in mock exasperation. "Yeah, and he just _loves_ surprises. He's probably going to bust me down to private and stick me on toilet scrubbing duty on a dreadnought, after three-ish weeks of no contact and then showing up unexpectedly."

"You're going gray," she replied.

"Don't change the subject," he laughed.

"Well, you are!" Shepard reached out and traced her fingers delicately over his ear. "Right here," she continued, repeating the motion. "Gray."

"It's probably your fault," he muttered_. "_All the stress from this assignment."

"Well, I like it," she replied. A smile curved her lips, and she leaned closer. "Makes you look... distinguished." Her lips brushed his as she spoke, just shy of kissing him; her hand dropped from his ear, fingers sliding down the side of his neck and over his chest.

He closed the distance for her, pressing his lips urgently against hers, arms sliding around her waist and pulling her close. Obligingly, she lifted and slung one leg over his hips, settling astride him. Eventually, reluctantly, she pulled away.

"Well good morning, Commander," she said appreciatively.

"Morning," he replied, sliding a hand over her hip and down her thigh, allowing himself a little smugness as gooseflesh rose beneath his touch.

"So Chakwas called, too," she murmured. "She seems to have misplaced a radioactive Alliance officer."

"No kidding?" He folded one arm behind his head, his other hand coming to rest on her hip. His thumb brushed lightly over the skin just above her underwear. _So much for getting down there before the Doc noticed_, he thought, and promptly realized he didn't actually give a shit.

"It's the damndest thing," Shepard shrugged. She glanced down, and her index fingers tapped a little tattoo against the skin at the edge of his boxers. One finger tucked under the elastic, and she traced her nail along the sensitive skin just over his groin. He inhaled sharply as she touched _just_ the right place, and she exhaled a throaty laugh. "Apparently he just… disappeared in the middle of the night. Think I should be worried?"

"I doubt he's that dangerous if he had to break out of the _medical_ bay," Kaidan mused, catching and pulling her teasing fingers away. His hands slid up the insides of her wrists, until their palms pressed flat together.

"True," Shepard agreed. She twisted her palms just enough to entwine their fingers, and looked down at him like a predator as she rolled her hips languidly against his. Her voice was low and breathy, "But he might be packing heat."

Kaidan groaned, his hips rising to meet hers, his head tilting back. "You…" he hissed, words catching as she pressed into him again. Her tongue darted out, the tip of it touching to the sharp point of her incisor, and she gazed wolfishly down her nose at him. "I think you need to watch out."

"Pretty sure I have this under control," she scoffed. "No Alliance officer is going get me…aghh!" She squealed as he looped an arm around her waist, rolling her sideways, pinning her to the mattress.

"Do you?" Kaidan asked, pushing against her, delighting in the way she gasped. "Because I think you've got a wayward officer lurking around here." Another slow thrust, and she bit her lip. "And he is _definitely_ out for revenge."

He bit at her neck just below her ear, eliciting another gasp. A growling laugh rumbled through his chest as he slid a hand under her shirt, cupping her breast, tweaking the nipple between thumb and forefinger. She tangled her hands in his hair, holding his lips to her throat, her spine arching and pressing herself up into his fingers.

"Hey-" Shepard protested as Kaidan sat back on his heels, withdrawing his hand from her shirt and his teeth from her neck. Her disappointment faded however as she realized he intended to free them from their clothing as he tugged at the elastic of her panties. Shepard brought her knees up, allowing Kaidan to easily slide the underwear away. She wriggled quickly out of her shirt as he pushed off his boxers.

Shed of their clothing, he all but fell onto her once more, one arm snaking beneath her, the other hooking behind her knee and pulling her up to meet him. Shepard cried out as he entered her, her fingers winding into the sheets. Her free hand snaked up over his neck, nails biting into the flesh of his shoulder.

They found a quick, easy rhythm, pressing into one another, never separating by more than a few slick centimeters. She dragged her lips along his jawline, her breath warm and ragged against his skin, soft moans tickling his ear. He turned towards her, catching her mouth with his.

Her movements grew hurried, losing the steady cadence they had developed. Sliding her hand down his spine, she dug her fingers into the curve of his ass, pulling him deeper. With a last, breathy groan she lifted her hips from the bed to push desperately into his, clenching around him as she came, dragging him forcibly with her. He bucked hard against her in a final thrust, a sharp groan expelling from his lungs in a huff of hot air into her shoulder.

Shepard sagged into the mattress, her arm sliding from his shoulders to flop onto the sheets. "I told you," she muttered between panting breaths, "I had that all under control."

With a disbelieving snort of a laugh, Kaidan propped his head up on his elbow, gazing down at her in mild amusement. "Oh did you?" he inquired. "That's not how it looked from my perspective."

"Remind me again," she replied, tapping a finger thoughtfully against her lips, "But who came first?"

Kaidan lifted an eyebrow, pursing his lips. "Touché." He pressed a kiss to her cheek, and another just under her ear, eliciting that giggle that made his heart flutter. "I need to get back down to crew deck and get a shower and a shave," he said, regretfully extricating himself from Shepard's grasp.

"I've got a shower here, you know," she said. She reached out and traced a finger down his spine, the barest hint of a suggestion in her voice. "It's private. And the hot water is a lot more reliable."

With a laugh, he turned and placed his feet on the cold tile floor. "But I need to actually _take_ a shower," he said, standing. He began to gather his clothing from where it had been thrown haphazardly around the room. "Not... you know, make up for lost time."

Shepard huffed dramatically. "Be that way then," she said, tossing off the covers and standing. "_I _am going to use the private, reliably hot shower up here." She padded nakedly across the room, making Kaidan suddenly fumble with the buttons on his trousers as she passed. It was much easier to dress himself once she was out of sight.

"I'm heading back to medbay," he called as he passed the open bathroom door.

"Good luck," Shepard laughed from within. "I'll meet you outside the airlock in an hour or so?"

"I look forward to it."

* * *

><p>Once he was adequately showered, shaved, freshly uniformed and newly re-bandaged by Chakwas, Kaidan made his way to the CIC. His visit to the medbay had gone surprisingly well, the doctor proving to be remarkably un-bothered by Kaidan's late-night escape. She had simply prodded his lymph nodes, looked down his throat and in his eyes, and pronounced that, in her medical opinion, if his wounds could handle such vigorous activity he was probably fine to go about his normal life with a little caution.<p>

Of course she had also gone on to add, "And in my personal opinion, good for you," and a knowing wink. That resulted in a brief, furious fit of blushing on Kaidan's part, but all things considered a bit of friendly goading was better than a full-blown reprimanding.

Shepard of course wasn't yet at the airlock when he arrived. She had a tendency to run late, he had a penchant for turning up early, and so they rarely met anywhere at the same time. He started to dial in the keycode to open the door, figuring he could head out and call a cab, but his plans were foiled by the sound of someone clearing their throat in the cockpit.

As Kaidan watched, the pilot's chair slowly began to turn, eventually revealing the pilot himself. Joker appeared to be doing his best spy-movie villain impression, reclining languidly in his chair, elbows on the armrests and fingers steepled in front of himself.

"You have a good time last night?" the pilot inquired, a little overly-cheerful.

Kaidan glanced sidelong at the lock, half tempted to walk out on whatever this conversation was going to be before it had a chance to really get started. "Yes..." he said tentatively.

"Good, good," Joker replied, nodding. He pursed his lips, carefully scrutinizing Kaidan. "That's really good. I'm happy for you guys."

"Thanks?"

Joker continued to stare over his tented fingers, unblinking eyes slightly narrowed.

"Is this, uh... Is there something else?" Kaidan asked, resisting the urge to shift uncomfortably.

The pilot stared for another long, awkward minute, before finally clapping his palms together and placing his boots on the floor on either side of the chair. Slowly, deliberately he pushed out his chair and approached the airlock, stopping just a hair inside Kaidan's 'personal bubble'- not so close as to be overtly uncomfortably, but just close enough to be noticeable.

Kaidan had never really noticed, as the pilot had a tendency to slouch on the rare occasions when he wasn't sitting down, but drawn up to his full height, Joker was shockingly tall; easily three or four inches taller than Kaidan. Arms crossed over his chest, almost scowling down his nose, he actually cut a pretty intimidating figure.

"I just want you to know," Joker started, "That this is your one. Your _last_ one. You fuck it up this time, I will personally push you-" he tapped a finger on Kaidan's chest for emphasis- "out of that airlock. Clear?"

"W... What?" Kaidan stammered after a stunned moment. He put his hands on his hips, growing faintly indignant. "You've got to be kidding. You're the one who-"

"Look, I know I basically Jiminy Cricket-ed you oblivious assholes back together," Joker interjected, putting his hands up. "But it's only because I got so _tired_ of both of you whining about it all the time." His voice pitched an octave higher and he waved his hands in mock distress as he continued, "_'Oh Jeff, what do I do, Kaidan is just such a meanie, but he's so handsome!' 'Oh Joker, what do I do, I just can't function without Shepard!' _Goddamn that shit got old after like a _week_. I'm not the relationship magician, you know. that's why we have Kelly. Just because _you're_ too stupid to make a move doesn't mean _I_ should be punished with a lifetime of listening to you bitch about it."

"I, well... fair enough," Kaidan ceded with a shrug. "That doesn't really mean you get to be all threatening big brother about it."

"Oh, but it does," Joker corrected him. "See, thing is, I only pushed you in that direction because I knew she would be cool with it. If she didn't want you on the ship, you wouldn't've even been let on. If she didn't want you... well, _you_, she would have probably broken your jaw in the mess a couple weeks back. For whatever reason that I won't probably ever understand, she wants you around. And I, as offical shipboard BFF, have a responsibility to support her relationship choices."

Kaidan was quiet as he contemplated that, and started to form a response until Joker hushed him and continued, leaning even closer.

"That all being said, I swear on every god, goddess and whatever else this galaxy has, I will space your ass without a second thought if you ever speak to her like you did on Horizon or in the comm room again," he finished, with absolutely no hint of lightheartedness in his words.

There was a thick silence, Kaidan staring in shock at the steely-eyed scowl on the pilot's face. His jaw worked for a moment as he tried to formulate words- an apology? A biting retort? He had no idea, it was clear Joker meant business- until suddenly Joker's lips trembled and pressed together in barely-contained mirth. That mirth quickly burst forth in a fit of laughter, actual tears forming in the corners of the helmsman's eyes as he bent double and put his hands on his knees.

"Oh, my... shit, man, you should have seen the look on your face," he wheezed, straightening and clapping a hand on Kaidan's shoulder. "Dude I'm just fuckin' with you, okay? Shepard can take care of herself. She doesn't need me to fix her shit."

A nervous laugh bubbled out of Kaidan's throat, for he wasn't sure Joker was kidding _at all_. "You got me good," he said. "Official shipboard BFF, though?"

"Hey, it's true. Don't be jealous, I'm your friend too," Jeff shrugged. "I just like her better."

"Of course you do," Shepard said brightly, appearing at the pilot's elbow. She winked at Kaidan. "I'm way prettier than he is."

"Well that just goes without saying," Joker shrugged. He turned around, assuming his usual shuffling slouch back to his chair. "You kids have fun. Don't do anything I would do."

* * *

><p>Anderson did an honest-to-God double take when they walked in. He glanced up from his desk, muttered an irritated greeting at Shepard, looked back to his work and then sat up straight, frowning impressively when he realized Kaidan was also in attendance.<p>

"Alenko," the admiral said tightly. He looked from Shepard, to Kaidan, then back to Shepard. "I was only expecting you."

"Yeah, thought you might want your missing Spectre back, though," she shrugged.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Anderson shook his head. "I suppose I should just be grateful he isn't _dead_." He waved his hand at the two chairs in front of his desk. "Have a seat."

Kaidan obliged. Shepard, of course, did not. Rather than address it, Anderson forged ahead.

"Three weeks." The admiral folded his hands on the desk before him, his face arranging itself into the sternest gaze Kaidan had ever had the misfortune to see. "I haven't gotten an official report from you in _three weeks_, Commander," the admiral continued, the slightest pinching of his brow somehow causing the look to increase exponentially in disapproval. "I've come to expect this sort of thing out of her—" he jerked his chin towards Shepard, who was now picking through the bookshelf against the opposite wall –"but I thought better out of you, Alenko."

"I can explain," Kaidan started, despite a distinct lack of confidence in his own ability to bullshit.

"That won't be necessary," Anderson interrupted. "I don't know, and at this point don't particularly care, what you two were doing. You had _one_ job, Kaidan, and that was to keep her out of trouble."

"All due respect, sir," Kaidan said wryly, "But that was a failing mission from the minute you handed it down."

With an exasperated roll of his eyes Anderson sat back in his chair, rigid professionalism quickly forgotten. "I know," he said wearily. "God help me, I know. Trouble follows her like stink on an elcor."

"I'm pretty sure it's the other way around," Kaidan mused. "She'd be the stink."

Shepard turned away from the bookshelf to narrow her eyes at them. "I'm right here," she said, frowning. "I can hear both of you."

"Good," Anderson said, louder, crossing his arms. "What the hell were you thinking, disappearing like that?"

"I was thinking that Cerberus had a bunch of clones of me," Shepard shrugged. She glanced back at the bookshelf, plucking up a little ceramic… something vaguely elephant shaped, turning it over in her fingers. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but that seems like something we _don't_ want lurking around the galaxy."

"Whatever the purpose," he said tightly, unable to argue directly with her reasoning, "You can't just hare off into the night like that without telling me, first. You are really trying my patience with this one."

"Yeah I've never done _that_ before," Shepard smirked, setting the little elephant- elcor?- back in its place on the shelf. "Look, I'm sorry, I know we're one poorly timed fart away from a full-scale galactic incident with the Hegemony, but I didn't skip my court date. I'm technically a free agent, and a Spectre-"

_"This is serious, _Elizabeth!" Her first name cracked across the room like lightning, followed by a terrible silence. Shepard went rigid, holding Anderson's angry gaze. Anything even remotely resembling good humor evaporated, as she pressed her lips into a thin line and her brow tightened.

Kaidan, feeling exactly as though he was caught in a private family argument, did his best to vanish into the upholstery of his chair. Thankfully both Anderson and Shepard seemed to have forgotten his presence.

"Get as angry as you want at _me_," Anderson continued. "It won't change anything. You may be accustomed to a certain level of autonomy, but the Alliance doesn't give two hot shits about that. As far they're concerned, you're not a _free agent_. You're a deserter at best, and a human-supremacist _terrorist_ at worst."

She started to protest, and was easily quieted by severe wave of Anderson's hand. "_Quiet._ For ten goddamn minutes, Shepard, you need to listen and not smart off. I'm not the bad guy here. The only reason the _Normandy_ has been allowed to operate, until recently, was that Hackett prohibited the fleet from investigating or apprehending you, and I stopped anyone going over his head. But at this point, even our influence will not keep you safe with the entire Hegemony screaming for blood. Do you understand the severity of this situation? Do you know what's waiting for you?"

"Oh, I'm well aware," Shepard replied flatly. "Somewhere on Earth, there's a media circus brewing around a sham trial, at the behest of the government of a neighboring system we aren't even _remotely_ friendly with. All because everyone's either too scared or too stupid to pay attention to the fact that there's a massive army of incomprehensibly powerful machine-gods on their way here. Just because I slammed the door on them doesn't mean they arent looking for the nearest window."

"The flippancy is _very_ rapidly becoming tiresome," Anderson ground out through clenched teeth.

Shepard huffed a sigh, and pressed her palms into her eyes. "I'm sorry," she muttered.

"Sorry isn't going to cut it." Standing, the admiral crossed around his desk and approached the commander. "The Hegemony doesn't care about the Reapers. They don't care about the Citadel, they certainly don't care about Sol system, and they don't care about the actions of one human. They only care about the relay that detonated in one of their systems, and consequently wiped out every nearby batarian colony." He had reached Shepard, still standing near the bookcase. Anderson's tone had softened considerably, though was still a far cry from sympathetic. "The Hegemony wanted a public execution, Shepard. They were going to go to war over it, and we had to call in every favor we had to bargain them down to a trial."

"You didn't have to do that," Shepard said, though her protests were becoming weaker. "I could have-"

"We did," Anderson insisted. "And I would do it again. You're the most valuable asset we currently possess, should the Reapers make an appearance. Which means you're smart enough to understand why, now, we need to put on this charade for the batarians."

With a resigned shake of her head, Shepard looked down at the tile. "No, I understand. Trust me, I understand. We have a war with the batarians now, the Reapers will roll us that much faster when they do show up."

"I don't want it any more than you do," Anderson said, putting a reassuring hand on Shepard's shoulder. "It's going to be a complete nightmare."

"Then maybe _you _can understand why I took off without warning," the commander murmured.

"I never said I didn't," Anderson shrugged.

"It's just... this is probably my last couple months of anything resembling normalcy. Pulling me into dry dock, dropping a Spectre babysitter on me- no offense, Kaidan," she called over Anderson's shoulder.

"None taken," Kaidan chuckled, internally glad for the shift in mood that seemed to be taking place. "It's true."

"It was stifling. So I see a chance for one last hurrah, I'm going to take it," she continued. "I'm sorry it was such a shitstorm for you here, I didn't intend to fuck up your day by it."

"Child," Anderson chided, affection creeping into his voice, "Just because I disapprove doesn't mean I don't understand. Twenty years ago, put in your position, I would have done the exact same thing. The problem isn't that you went, it's that you didn't tell me."

"Feeling left out, old man?" Shepard teased.

"Hey, now," he scolded, "Take it easy on the 'old man' stuff. I can get around if I really need to."

* * *

><p>"That wasn't nearly as bad as I'd thought it was going to be," Kaidan said, relieved, as they walked back to the <em>Normandy.<em>

Shepard nodded in reply. "Yeah, Anderson's not so hard to work under. He's a hardass, but he's an _understanding_ hardass."

"It helped he spent most of the time focusing on _you_."

"Yeah, yeah. You took the literal bullet, I'll take the figurative one," she mused.

Kaidan laughed, and caught her hand in his. "Hey, Shepard," he said, slowing.

She twined their fingers together and glanced back with a murmured, "Yeah?"

"Go out with me tonight."

They had stopped walking, and stood beneath one of the ethereal trees so popular on the Council floors. "Out?" she inquired, testing the word. "Like, on a..."

"Like on a date. A real one," he prodded. "For all the drama, we've never actually _had_ a real one, you know."

"Oh I know." She appeared to contemplate the very concept of 'date' for a moment, chewing her bottom lip. After a long moment, wherein Kaidan had to do his best not to appear desperate, a smile split her face. "Of course."

"Oh thank god," he breathed. "I thought you were going to say no for a minute there."

"Perish the thought," she scoffed. "I could never say no to those big brown puppy eyes."


End file.
